f The Master Impressionists BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS THE FINE ARTS PRESS CHICAGO AIR Index t Air, luminous dust and vibrations, envelop out of doors. AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS. ANALYSIS Analysis of Bastien-Lepage’s “Les Foins” Analysis of Carolus-Duran’s “Les Pom- miers” . Analysis of Cassatt’s “Jeune femme au bal” Analysis of Cassatt’s art.149, Analysis of Cazin’s “Terrains de culture en Flandre” . Analysis of Cezanne’s art.213, Analysis of Degas’ “l’Absinthe”. Analysis of Degas’ pictures in the Luxem¬ bourg . Analysis of Degas' art. Analysis of Impressionist pictures in the Luxembourg. 176, 185, 186, Analysis of Manet’s ‘•Olympia” and “Le dejeuner sur Vherbe” .43, Analysis of Manet’s various pictures. .73, 74, 77, 75, Analysis of Manet’s ‘-Le Bon Bock” . .113, 114, Analysis of Manet’s “ The Funeral” . Analysis of Manet’s early pictures. Analysis of Claude Monet’s pictures. ...10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Analysis of Claude Monet’s art. .17, 18, 19, 20, Analysis of Berthe Morisot’s art.149, Analysis of W. J. Morrice’s art. Analysis of Pissarro’s art. Analysis of Raffaelli’s art.214, Analysis of Renoir’s art. Analysis of Renoir’s “Le Moulin de la Gcilette” . Analysis of Renoir “La Balangoire” . Analysis of Renoir’s “Young girls at piano” Analysis of Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame X.” . Analysis of Renoir’s “Torse de jeune femme” Analysis of Sisley’s art. Analysis of Toulouse-Lautrec’s art. ARABIC PAINTINGS. ART How to regain our hold on art. . . . .. ATMOSPHERE Atmosphere and light vibrations. Atmosphere, delicate vibrations, luminous dust, air. New qualities of atmosphere. BASTIEN-LEPAGE Bastien-Lepage’s “Les Foins” analyzed. . . . BLUE Blue and purple introduced into shadows,. BOULARD Boulard’s connection with the Impressionist movement . BOWIE Henry P. Bowie “The Laws of Japanese Painting” . BRITISH PAINTERS Out-of-door notations by British painters. . BROKEN COLOR The secret of Broken Color.106, Broken-color-impressionism . Subjects CABAT Louis Cabat practically unknown today... 164 CAFE GUERBOIS Cafe Guerbnis Group. 45 CALS Cals, An Early Impressionist. 24 CAILLEBOTTE Caillebotte Collection in the Luxembourg. . .1 63, 176, 185, 186, 187 CAMP FOLLOWERS Camp followers in Art. 260 CANADIAN PAINTER J. W. Morrice, Canadian painter. 216 CAROLUS-DURAN Carolus-Duran’s “Les Pornmiers” analyzed. 184 CASSATT Mary Cassatt not closely identified with the Impressionists . 149 Mary Cassatt’s art analyzed. 149, 250 CAZIN Cazin’s “Terrains de culture en Flandre” analyzed . 184 CEZANNE CCzanne faulty as a draughtsman. 134 What Cezanne painted. 134 Value of Cezanne’s pigment. 135 Ct'zanne’s method of painting. 135 Cezanne’s neutral color. 136 Death of Cezanne. 137 Cezanne’s pictures in the Luxembourg an¬ alyzed . 213 Analysis of Cezanne’s art. 239 When Cezanne became independent. 265 Cezanne and Gauguin.. . 265 Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Post Im¬ pressionism . 2S0 CHARPENTTER Analysis of Portrait of Madam Charpentier. .124, 125, 126 CHEVREUL Discoveries of Chevreul and Helmholtz. . . . 105 CHINESE Chinese paintings. 39 COLOR New gospel of broken colors. 106 Charm and freshness of colors. 107 Clever gradation of colors. 265 Complementary colors.105, 106 Decomposition of color. 105 Lack of solidity. 107 Colors, Manet used to create the impression he desired. 37 Neutral color, offer of Cezanne to Impres¬ sionism . 136 No permanent color. 61 Colors of the prism. 110 Colors of the rainbow. 110 Optical mingling of color. 105 Primary colors.105, 106 Repetition of colors. 109 Science of complementary colors. 105 Superposed colors. 107 White between each to keep the colors apart 109 Working direct from nature with broken colors. 107 COLORED SHADOWS Blue and purple introduced into shadows.. 63 o 49 261 184 184 201 250 184 239 137 218 248 187 44 78 115 115 117 204 243 250 216 248 254 124 194 194 198 198 200 247 153 39 24 61 49 129 184 63 153 90 47 110 260 8 INDEX—THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS CONFETTI SCHOOL Painters of the Confetti School. 263 CONVENTIONS Conventions revolted against. 35 COPYING Copying at the Louvre, Manet, Morisot, Degas, Whistler, Legros. 22 COURBET Courbet’s influence. 35 CUBISM Definition of Cubism. 288 Cubists. 283 DAZZLING SUNLIGHT Painting of dazzling sunlight.*. . . 104 DECOMPOSITION Decomposition of color. 105 DEGAS History, eary studies and works of Degas. . .18, 21, 22 Degas a descendant of David and Ingres.. 37 Degas interested in reality. 81 Degas’ women analyzed. 82 Degas became connected with the Impres¬ sionists . 83 Degas’ conception of life. 84 Degas’ -‘The Dancers at the Bar” . 85 Degas’ unsociability . 87 Degas’ “VAbsinthe” analyzed. 137 Degas’ pictures in the Luxembourg analyzed 219 Observation of Degas’ art. 219 Analysis of Degas’ art. 248 DE NITTIS DeNittis connection with the Impressionist , movement . 153 DESCRIPTION Description of “ Olympia” and ‘‘Le dejeuner sur Vherbe” .43, 44 DIFFERENT TONE IMPRESSIONS Different tone impressions and the older masters . 48 DIFFICULTIES No desire to evade difficulties. 52 DIVISION Division of tone. 106 DRAWING Drawing of Impressionists. 51 DUBLIN Master Impressionists in Dublin. 168 EDGES No edges in Nature. 51 EGYPTIAN Egyptian paintings. 39 ENGLAND England’s Impressionist Masters. 105 EXECUTION Execution in art. 52 EXHIBITIONS AND EXPOSITIONS First Independent Exposition of Master Im¬ pressionists . 118 Exhibitions following 1877 . 127 Exhibition of Impressionists in 1876, 1 877, participants. 126 Exhibition of Impressionist pictures in New York.188, 192 Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.... 225 Impressionists Exposition Hotel de la Revue, Paris, 1912. 225 FIRST First coming together of the Master Im¬ pressionists Group.25, 26, 27, 29, 31 First Exhibitors with Master Impressionists 118 FLOWERS Flowers by Cezanne. 230 Flowers by Manet. 230 Flowers by Renoir. 229 FORAIN Art of Forain. 255 FUTURISM Definition of Futurism. 288 Futurists. 285 Italian Futurists. 285 GAUGUIN Paul Gauguin and Pointillism. 266 Gauguin and Cezanne. .. 265 Gauguin and his rules, talks, colors, draw¬ ing, teachings. .267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274 GERMANY Examples of Master Impressionists in Ger¬ many . 167 GLEYRE Gleyre’s studio.25, 26 GUILLAUMIN Guillaumin’s part in the Impressionistic Movement. 138 Guillaumin, Pissarro and Gauguin. 265 Guillaumin’s and his friends’ help. 128 Guillaumin’s lottery ticket. 128 Guillaumin, Cezanne and Zola. 44 Guillaumin went full length in the pe¬ culiarities of Impressionism. 126 Guillaumin represented at 1875 exhibition. . .121, 122 Guillaumin at Academie Suisse. 44 HELMHOLTZ Discoveries of Helmholtz and Chevreul. . . . 105 HISTORY History of name “Impressionists”. 119 ILLUSTRATIONS Illustrations used in articles obtained from various museums. 11 IMPRESSIONISM Impressionism at end of its usefulness. 261 Definition of Impressionism. 288 Movement of Impressionism. 173 Impressionist group in 1862 . 35 Impressionist group in 1863 and their progress . 39 Impressionist masters in England. 105 Guillaumin's part in Impressionist move¬ ment . 138 Impressionist methods applied to figure painting . 193 Impressionist pictures in the Luxembourg. . Impressionist pictures in New York. . 188, 189, 192 Impressionist rules agreed upon. 51 A Study of the Impressionists’ purposes. .5, 6 Impressionists called Independents. 119 Impressionists called School of 1870. 119 Impressionists affected by Japanese art.95, 96 First and later Impressionist expositions. . . . 118, 122, 126, 127 Group of Impressionists after the war. Ill History of name “Impressionists” first given. . . . in 1874. 119 Predecessors of Impressionists with ex¬ amples . 110 Rules of Impressionists. 109 1NDEX—THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 9 What the Impressionists had accomplished in 1870 . Who and What the Impressionists are. INDEPENDENTS Impressionists named Independents. INDIAN Indian paintings. INFLUENCES Various influences in art. INTRAN'SIGEANTS Impressionists named Intransigeants. IRELAND Examples of Master Impressionists in Ire¬ land . ISMS Isms of painting.2 83, 2 84, ISTS Ists of painting.283, 284, ITALIAN Italian Futurists. JAPANESE Japanese art.90, 91, 92, 93, The laws of Japanese painting. JONGKIND Jongkind and Monet. Jongkind, early Impressionist. KEY Key heightened.41, LA LOGE Several pictures of “La Loge” . LANE Sir Hugh. Lane, Honorary Director. LE BAR AUX FOLIES BERGLRES History of “Le bar aux Folies Bergeres”. . . LEBOURG, ALBERT Albert Lebourg.. Analysis of Lebourg’s “Effet de Neige”. . . . Analysis of Lebourg’s “Paysage avec f leave” Le CABARET DE REICHSCHOFFEN History of “Le Cabaret de Reichschoffen”. . LE Dfi’JEUNER SUR L’HERBE “Le dejeuner sur Vherbe” and “Olympia” described and analyzed.43, LE LINGE History of this most interesting painting. . LtfPINE Lupine, early Impressionist. LIGHT Light painted on light, different colors side by side . Worshipers of light in painting. LIGHTENING Lightening of the palette described by Zola. LINE Line in art. LOUVRE. Musee du Manet, Morisot, Degas, Whistler, Legros copying at the Louvre. LUMINISTS . LUMINOUS Luminous vibrations. LUXEMBOURG Acceptance of the Master Impressionists. . . Master Impressionists in the Luxembourg. . .163, 176, 185, 186, 187, MANET History of his early struggles.13, 14 Analysis of his early pictures.14, 15, 17 Manet’s first manner. 37 Manet's power of selection. 37 Father of the movement. 69 The pioneer and leader. 69 Conception of his work. 70 Manet's various pictures analyzed. .73, 74, 75, 77, 78 How, in painting, he added various touches of color . 79 Manet represents intellectual side. 80 Manet’s method of painting. 80 Manet interested in reality. 81 Manet’s women analyzed. 82 Manet’s “Le Bon Bock” analyzed. .113, 114, 115 Manet’s “The Funeral” analyzed. 115 Manet’s early pictures analyzed. 117 Manet’s end of life and death. 159 Problem solved by Manet. 179 MASS Mass-Impressionism . 260 MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS Development as a group. 112 Exhibitions by Master Impressionists. Master Impressionists Group in 1866. 45 Master Impressionists in Dublin, Ireland. . . 168 Master Impressionists in Germany. 167 Master Impressionists in the Luxembourg. . Who are included in the Master Impression¬ ists Group. 3 MATISSE Matisse, Picasso, Pacabia. Van Dongen, ex¬ ponents of ugliness. 283 MENTAL Mental attitude in approaching the study of Master Impressionists . 6 MODELING Round, Flat, Cubes, Angles. 284 MONET Descendant of Claude Lorraine. 37 Monet’s luminous tones, 1865. 130 Monet and Jongkind. 130 Monet specializes in light. 130 Painter of series of pictures. 132 Monet’s pictures in the Luxembourg an¬ alyzed . 204 Analysis of his art. 243 MORRICE W. J. Morrice, successor of the Master Im¬ pressionists . 216 MORISOT Early studies of Morisot. 18 Morisot descendant of Fragonard. 37 Morisot’s part in the Impressionist Exhibi¬ tions . 149 Analysis of her art. 250 MOVEMENT Guillaumin’s part in Impressionist movement 138 IvIOVEMENTS “Has been” movements. 264 Separation of movement in art. 259 Movements in France, Holland, England, Germany. 260 Real movements based on certain ideas. . . . 259 NATURE Working direct from nature. 47 Working direct from nature with broken colors. 107 Neo-Impressionism or Pointillism. 263 67 3 119 39 39 123 168 285 285 285 95 90 130 24 104 233 169 238 219 221 221 235 44 237 24 41 265 67 51 22 53 51 165 193 I N DEX — THE M A S T E R / M P RE S SI O NI ST S 1 0 NEUTRAL COLOR Cezanne’s neutral color. 137 NEW SPIRIT New spirit in art much like old spirit in commercialism . 281 NITTIS, de Analysis of De Nittis’ “La Cote” . 221 Portrait of Madam de Nittis by Manet. 15 NOA-NOA Paul Gauguin’s “Noa-Noa” . 273 OBSERVATIONS Result of observations of Impressionists. . . 53, 58, 59 OLD MASTERS Old Masters, air, luminous dust and vibra¬ tions envelop out-of-doors. 4 9 OLYMPIA “ Olympia ” and “Le dejeuner sur Vherbe” described and analyzed. 43 , 44 OPTICAL Optical mingling of color. 105 ORTHODOX ART Definition of orthodox art. 2 88 OUT-OF-DOOR Out-of-door painting by Monet. Pissarro, Sisley, Guillaumin, Renoir. 48 Out-of-door notations by British painters. . 47 OUTLINE Outlines of objects. 51 PALETTE Palette lightening described by Zola. 67 Palette of the Master Impressionists. 109 PERSIAN Persian paintings. 39 PERSONALITIES Personalities of Impressionists Group (1866) described. 45 PERSPECTIVE Perspective planes and surfaces. 51 PISSARRO Analysis of his art. 248 Pissarro's work towards end of life. 133 PITCH Pitch of a too low color. 41 PLAN Plan of work. 7 PLANES Planes and surface in art. 51 PLEIN-AIR Plein-air Realists. 260 POETICAL Poetical license of artists. 23 POINTILLISM Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism. 263 PORTRAITS Portraits by Manet. 71 POST IMPRESSIONISM Aims and creed of Post Impressionism. . . . .265, 280, 281, 282, 288 Definition of Post Impressionism. 288 Sponsors of movement. 280 PREJUDICE Prejudice of the public. 12 PRICE Price paid for pictures of Impressionists in 1875. 1876.122, 123 PRIMARY Primary colors. 105 PRISM Colors of the prism. 110 PUBLIC Public prejudice. 12 PURPLE Purple and blue introduced into shadows.. 63 RAFFAfiLLI Raffaelli’s method of painting. 139 Raffaelli’s pictures in the Luxembourg an¬ alyzed . 214 Analysis of his aft. 254 RAINBOW Colors of the rainbow. 110 REALISM Realism, previous recent movement in art. . 11 REALITY Degas and Manet interested in Reality. 81 RENOIR Renoir, through color, represents one side of impressionist school. 80 Renoir’s women analyzed.. 82 Renoir was influenced by. 81 Analysis of some of his pictures. 124 Renoir was influenced by his visit to Venice. 147 Renoir's pictures in the Luxembourg. 193 REPETITION Repetition of subjects. 197 RETROSPECTIVE Retrospective Exposition of the Master Im¬ pressionists, Paris, 1912. 225 ROMANTICISM Romanticism, previous recent movement in an:. 11 RULES No exact rules by Impressionists. 109 SALE Who were represented at the Sale of Im¬ pressionists, 1875. 122 SALON DES REFUSES Salon des Refuses . 112 Exhibitors at Salon des Refuses, 1863. and paintings first shown. 39 SALON Salons of 1883 and 1863 compared. 129 SCHOOL OF 1870 Impressionists named School of 1870. 119 SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS Scientific truths discovered. 61 SECOND EXHIBITION Second Exhibition of Impressionists, 1876.. 122 SELECTION Selection of pictures by individuals or com¬ mittees . 170 SENSATION Sensation created upon seeing things. 280 Sensation of entering room of Impressionist pictures at the Luxembourg. 175 SfiRUSIER Paul SOrusier. 267 SEURAT Paul Seurat, founder of Pointillism.... 263, 282 SHADOWS Shadows and outlines. 51 Colored shadows. 62 Shadows falsified. 104 SIGNAC.263, 282 SINCERE Sincere works of art. 99 INDEX —THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 1 1 SISLEY Sisley’s contribution to the art of the Im¬ pressionists . 143 Analysis of his art. 247 SOLIDS . 130 SPOT Spot painting. 263 SUBJECT Repetition of subject. 197 SUCCESSOR Successor of the Master Impressionists, W. J. Morrice. 216 SUNLIGHT Sunlight and open air, truth and body of nature .. 129 Painting of dazzling sunlight. 104 TECHNICAL Technical dexterities . 261 TEMPORARY Temporary members of Master Impression¬ ists Group. 29 THIRD DIMENSION. 284 TONE Division of tone. 106 TOUCH-IMPRESSIONISM . 260 TOULOUSE-LAUTREC Toulouse-Lautrec’s work analyzed. 153 TURNER Turner’s glowing canvases. VALUE What Manet did in values. 80 VAN GOGH Vincent Van Gogh. 265 History of his views. 274 His self-portrait and its effect. 276 Van Gogh’s letters. 278 VIBRATIONS Everything seen through vibrations of at¬ mosphere . 51 VON TSCHUDI, Herr.163, 166 WAYSIDE CHRIST Gauguin's ‘‘The Wayside Christ'' . 273 WHITE White between each color. 109 WOLFF Albert Wolff on Impressionist-lunatics. 235 Albert Wolff’s opinion of second exhibition of Impressionists in 1876 . 123 WOMEN Degas' women analyzed. 82 Manet’s women analyzed. 82 Renoir's women analyzed. 82 Women in art, Morisot and Cassatt. 250 ZOLA Lightening of the Palette as described by Zola . 67 Zola's “Mes Haines’' . 44 109 Index to Illustrations (Arranged Alphabetically According to Artists) [Arranged Alphabetically According to Artists.] BASTIEN-LEPAGE, JULES “Les Foins” . 176 BRACQUEMOND, F£LIX “fitude pour ‘Don Juan’ dessin”. 63 BOUDIN, EUGfiNE “Trouville, Maree haute”. 29 “Le bassin du Commerce au Havre”. 31 “The Seashore at Binerville”. 153 “Une corvette russe dans le bassin de l’Eure” . 184 “La Rade de Villefranche”. 208 BOULARD, AUGUSTE “Portrait of Boy”. 189 CAILLEBOTTE, GUSTAVE “Les raboteurs de parquet”. 162 “Toits sous la neige”. 218 CALS, FELIX ADOLPHE “Lard et hareng”. 30 “Le dejeuner d’Honfleur”. 32 “Femme effilant de l’etouppe”. 45 “Etude de la jeune fille”. 48 CAROLUS-DURAN, SMILE AUGUSTE “Les pommiers” . 175 CASSATT, MARY “Jeune femme tenant un enfant dans ses bras” . 126 “Mother and child”. 158 “Mother and child”. 159 “Dans la. loge”. 160 “M&re et enfant”. 224 “Little girl in the blue room”. 249 “Child in blue”. 251 “Child in yellow”. 251 “Child and dog”. 251 CAZIN, JEAN-CHARLES “Terrain de culture en Flandre”. 174 C 6 ZANNE, PAUL “Effet de neige”. 59 “Les joueurs de cartes”. 89 “Le pont de Melun”. 119 “Self portrait”.134, 166, 199, 271 “La maison dir boucher ft Pontoise”. 136 “Landscape” . 137 “Still-life” . 138 “Woman with the Beads”. 139 “Portrait of Madame Cezanne”. 139 “L’Estaque” . 200 “Auvers; la vallee”. 201 “Portrait of Gustave Geffroy”. 230 “Nature morte” . 230 “Auvers; le village”. 231 “Le Jas de Bouffau”. 270 “The Mountain” . 270 “Portrait of the artist’s father”. 271 “The card players”. 272 “Autopsy” . 272 “Village on the banks of the river”. 273 “The Plain at Aix”. 273 “The Judgment of Paris”. 274 "The Bathers”. 275 “Leda” . 275 “Woman and Child”. 276 DEGAS, HILLAIRE-GERMAIN-EDGAR “Deux Danseuses” . 14 “Au theatre” . 15 “L’absinthe” . 16 “Voiture aux courses”. 17 “Apres le bain”. 18 “La legon de danse”. 60 “Race horses” . 61 “Au Cafe-concert” . 77 “Portrait” . 78 “Repetition de danse sur la scene”. 79 “Danseuse au repos”. 80 “Danseuse sortant de sa loge”. 81 “ficole de danse”. 82 “Danseuse ft la barre”. 83 “Chez la modiste”. 84 “Portrait de Mme. X”. 85 “La repetition de danse”. 115 “Chevaux de Courses”. 116 “Sur la plage”. 116 “La famille Mante”. 117 “Dancing girl, with fan (Drawing)”. 167 “Danseuse” . 183 “Danseuse sur la scene”. 202 “Les Figurants” . 204 “Femme au bain”. 205 “Un cafe Boulevard Montmartre”. 205 “Danseuse nouant son brodequin”. 206 “Before the Start”. 207 “At the race course ; the start”. 207 “Washerwomen” . 208 “Le foyer de la danse”. 232 “Danseuse revenant pour saluer”. 234 “Trois danseuses” . 235 “Danseuses derriere le portant”. 237 “Danseuse dans sa loge”. 241 “Deux femmes” . 246 “L’homme au chapeau”. 250 “Portrait de femme”. 253 “Danseuse les points”. 253 “Portrait de Duranty”. 255 “Au champ de courses”. 256 DE NITTIS, GIUSEPPI “La Cote” . 159 FANTIN-LATOUR, HENRI “Hommage ft Delacroix”.Frontispiece “Portrait of fidouard Manet”. 5 “L’atelier des Batignolles”. 37 “lStude de nu”. 39 “Helene (Faust)” . 46 FORAIN, JEAN-LOUIS “Le plage de Trouville”. 250 “The Widower” . 251 “Adjournment of Court”. 254 “The Lawyers” . 256 GAUGUIN, PAUL “Women of Tahiti”. 277 “Self Portrait of the Artist”. 282 “Adam and Eve—Tahiti”. 282 The wayside Christ”. 282 “Papaete” . 284 “Still-life, flowers and fruit”. 288 GUILLAUMIN, ARM AND “Le bateau-mouche” . 52 “La Seine ft Charenton”. 53 “Femme lisant dans la campagne”. 127 INDEX —THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 1 3 “TSte d’enfant (pastel)” . 140 “Landscape” . 141 “Photograph of the Artist”. 167 “La roche de l’Echo (Creuse) & Crozant”. . 212 “Le Puy Barion (Crozant)”. 213 “Le Puy Barion (Automne) Crozant”. 214 LEBOURG, ALBERT “Port de La Rochelle, aquarelle et gouache” 49 “Temps de pluie”. 50 “Pavsage avec fleuve”. 120 “Effet de neige—Paysage d’hiver”. 156 “La Seine” . 191 LEGROS. ALPHONSE “Portrait d’fidouard Manet”. 36 “Portrait du pere de l’artiste”. 38 LfiPINE, STANISLAS “La Seine a Passy”. 50 LOISEAU, GUSTAVE “House at Vandreuil”. 280 MANET, EDOUARD “Le Ballet, espagnol”. 3 “Lola de Valence”. 4 “Girl with a parrot”. 6 “Boy with sword”. 7 “Le Fifre” . 8 “Portrait d’fimile Zola”. 10 “Le Vieux Mendiant”. 11 “Au cafe” . 12 “Combat de taureaux”. 13 “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe”. 34 “La legon de musique”. 35 “L’enfant au chien”. 40 “La musique aux Tuileries”. 41 “Olympia” . 42 “Portrait de Mile. J. S.”. 43 “Portrait of Theodore Duret”. 44 "L’Automne, portrait de femme”. 47 “Portrait d’Eva Gonzales". 66 “L’enfant aux cerises”. 68 “Portrait de Mme. fernile Zola”. 70 “La Femme au tub”. 69 “Portrait d’Antonin Proust jeune”. 71 “Nana” . 72 “Le Bon Bock”. 108 “The Funeral” . 109 “Les paveurs de la Rue de Berne”. 157 “Le balcon” . 178 “Le Repos, Portrait de Berthe Morisot”. . . . 209 “Le linge”. 226 “La femme it l’£ventail”. 227 “Le bar aux Folies Berg&res”. 228 “Le cafe it Reisehoffen”. 232 “Le Cabaret de Reichshoffen”. 253 “Portrait d’Henri Rochefort”... 260 “Le buveur d’absinthe” . .. 262 “Le liseur, portrait du peintre Gall”. 266 MATISSE, HENRI “Spanish woman” .•.. 285 “fttude de Femme; dessin”. 285 “Study” . 286 “The woman with the green eyes”. 286 MAUFRA, MAXIME “Marine” . 278 “Transport Vessels leaving Havre”. 279 MONET, CLAUDE “Route du Bas-Breau”. 18 “Chasse-maree it l’ancre ; Rouen”. 20 “Zaandam-Hollande” . 20 “Marine” . 21 “Les coquelicots, Argenteuil”. 22 Le pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil”.... 23 “Carrieres Saint-Denis” . 24 “Coucher de soleil it Lavacourt”. 57 “Paquet de mer it fitretat”. 62 “The Willow” . 90 “Le Quai de Westminster”. 91 “La maison bleue ; Hollande”. 92 “L’inondation” . 93 “Les environs d’Argenteuil”. 94 “La berge de Lavacourt”. 95 “Ravine of the Creuse”. 96 “Impression. Soleil levant”. 110 “Effet de printemps”. Ill “Les falaises d’fitretat”. 112 “La route de Givemy”. 113 “Les dechargeurs de Charbon”. 114 “La d^bOcle des glaces, 1881”. 129 “Snow effect, Vetheuil, 1881”.•. . . 130 “At Antibes” . 131 “Waterloo Bridge, London, 1900”. 132 “Waterloo Bridge with Boats carrying Freight” . 133 “Le Dejeuner” . 165 “Les Rocheurs de Belle-Isle”.... 193 “La Gare Saint-Lazare”. 194 “Vetheuil” . 196 "L’figlise de Vetheuil”. 195 “La Cathedrale it Rouen”. 197 “Promenade sur la falaise, 1882”. 198 “Photograph of the artist”. 199 “Le Dejeuner” (1868). 229 “La meule, effet de soleil, 1891”. 236 “La Seine it Argenteuil”. 239 “La Tamise” . 240 “Le pont d’Argenteuil”. 240 “Le pont d’Argenteuil, 1874”. 242 “Peupliers, effet de soleil”. 244 “Effet de neige” (1893). 245 “Les Nympheas” . 247 “Femme dans un Jardin”. 261 “Le Palais du Parlement, Londres”. 264 “Les coquelicots; Giverny, 1885”. 265 MORISOT, BERTHE “Le lever”. 28 “La chasse aux Papillons”. 51 “Les deux Soeurs”. 128 “Boating” . 154 “The dressmaker (drawing)”. 155 “Jeune femme au bal”. 172 “Self portrait”. 199 “Femme it sa toilette”.. 233 “Jeune femme assise”. 236 MORRICE, JAMES WILSON “The beach at Dieppe”. 221 “C6te d’Emeraude”. 222 “Le Quai des Grands Augustins”. 223 PISSARRO, CAMILLE “Le diligence de Louveciennes”. 26 “Femme 6pluchant des legumes”. 27 “Temps de neige, rue de village”. 54 “Les sarcleuses”. 124 “The Great bridge at Rouen”. 125 “Printemps, vue de Louveciennes”. 125 “The Garden of the Louvre”. 135 “Photograph of the Artist”. 165 “Les toits rouges”. 170 “Le Louvre, soleil d’hiver”. 191 “Le lavoir”. 215 “Potager ; arbres en fleurs”. 216 “La brouette”. 217 “Summer, View in Brittany”. 227 “Winter, View in Brittany”. 248 INDEX—THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 1 4 “Le Cours-la-Reine, Rouen”. 249 “Crystal Palace, London, 1871”. 267 “Vue de Rouen, 1883”. 269 raffaelli, j. f. “Boulevard des Italiens”. 142 “Street scene in Paris”. 143 “Beyond the city walls, Paris”. 144 “Chez le fondeur”. 180 “Notre-Dame de Paris”. 181 “Les vieux Convalescents”. 182 “Reunion publique,” portrait de M. C16- menceau . 210 “Les invites attendant la noce”. 211 RENOIR, PIERRE-AUGUSTE “Femme nue couchee sur un canapS”. 30 “Danseuse” . 56 “Femme nue couchee”. 67 “Nature morte”. 73 “Baigneuse assise, de face”. 74 “La Parisienne”. 75 “Baigneuse debout, a mi-jambes, de profile fi. gauche”. 76 “Les parapluies”. 98 “Madam Charpentier and her children”. ... 99 “La tasse de the”. 100 “La femme a la rose”. 101 “Joueuse de guitare”. 102 “MSre et enfant”. 103 “Nature morte”. 104 “Sketch of Berthe Morisot and her daugh¬ ter” . 105 “La Danse si la campagne”. 106 “La Danse & la ville”. 107 “Woman in Empire costume”. 129 “Young woman reading”. 149 “La Bohemienne” . 150 "A woman, resting on the grass”. 151 “Mother and child, promenade”. 152 “Child writing”. 153 “Self-Portrait” . 164 Photograph of the artist.164, 199 Alfred Sisley, portrait of. 165 Paul Cezanne, portrait of.„ 166 “Le pont du chemin de fer it Chatou”. 168 “La balangoire”. 169 “Le Moulin de la Galette”. 173 “Liseuse” . 190 “Potrait de Mme. X.”. 193 “Jeunes filles au piano”. 196 “Torse de jeune femme au soleil”. 203 “La loge”. 225 “Deux femmes sur l’herbe”. 225 “Le piano”. 238 “Femme nue couchfe, panneau”. 238 “Dans la loge”. 241 “Portrait of woman, with fan”. 243 “Bather sleeping”. 246 “Baigneuse” . 248 “Confidences” . 253 “Ingenue” . 255 “Enfant portant des fleurs”. 255 “Le dejeuner des canotiers”. 258 “L’Algerienne” . 267 “Torse de femme”. 268 SISLEY, ALFRED “Le canal”. 25 “Bateaux a l’ficluse de Bougival”. 57 “Petite place a Argenteuil”. 64 “La passerelle d’Argenteuil”. 86 “Le printemps”. 86 “Louveciennes, temps de neige”. 87 “Les seieurs de long”. 88 “Village on the shore of the Marne”. 121 “Temps de neige” (1873). 122 “Le Loing et les coteaux de Saint- Nicaise” .. 123 “The river Seine at Bougival”. 145 “Street facing the river”. 146 “Street in a village”. 147 “The Sluice”. 147 “The river Seine at Grenelle”. 148 “Moret-sur-Loing, 1879”. 185 “Vue de Saint-Mammas”. 186 “Effect de neige”. 187 “Les Bords du Loing”. 188 “LisiSre de foret au printemps”. 192 “Bords de la Seine”. 219 “La Canal du Loing”. 220 “L’lnondation, 1872”. 252 “Les Coteaux de la Bouille, prfis de Rouen” 259 “Les coteaux de Moret”. 263 “Bords de rivigre”. 263 TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, H. de “A ma mie, scSne de cabaret”. 58 “Femme da.ns un jardin”. 118 “fitude” . 179 “Miss Bedford”. 227 VAN GOGH, VINCENT “The Fields”. 276 “Sunflowers” . 277 “A Seaman’s Mother”. 277 “Father Tanguy”. 277 “Rain Effect”. 281 “Street and Trees”. 281 “Self portrait of the artist (with pipe)”. . . . 283 “Man with bachelor’s button”. 283 “Man with red hair”. 283 “Self portrait”.286, 287 “The smoker”. 286 “The old peasant”. 287 Bibliography Uuranty— LciNouvelle peinture .1876 Theodore Duret— Les Peintres Impressionnistes. 1878 Theodore Duret— “Critique d’ Avant-garde .1885 F61ix Fesneon— Les Impressionnistes en 18 S 6 . . . .1886 Theodore Childs— Art and Criticism .1892 George LeComte— L’Art impressionniste .1892 George Moore—Modern Painting.1893 Gustave Geffroy—La vie artistique... Andre Mellerio—L’Exposition de 1900 et L’Art impressionniste.1900 Camille Mauclair—L'lmpressionnisme, Son his- toire, Son esthetique, ses maitres.1904 Julius Meier Graeffe—Entwickelung geschichte der modernen Kunst.1904 Wynford Dewhurst—Impressionist Painting. . . .1904 Theodore Duret—Histoire des Peintres Impres¬ sionnistes .1906 Andre Fontainas—Histoire de la Peinture franchise au XIX Siecle.1906 Leonce Benedite—La Peinture Frangaise au XIX Sieele . Haldane Macfall—A History of Painting—The Modern Genius .1911 Julius Meier Graeffe—Auguste Renoir ....1912 Most of the literature on the Master Impression¬ ists, even in France, is only to be found in mag¬ azines and daily newspapers especially devoted to art. There are, however, a few good books on this sub¬ ject, the most complete being “Les Peintres Impres¬ sionnistes” by Theodore Duret, and to him is due my heaviest debt of gratitude. I owe much to the keen observation and scholarly mind of Andre Michel; to Louis Vauxcelles. who senses the art of color and writes with charm ; to Arsene A lexandre, who has the ability to judge an artist by the range of his emotional utterance ; to Leonce BenUdite, who with his deep sense of the real significance of art has written many excellent monographs on the various artists who were associated with this move¬ ment, and to many others. Charles Louis Borgmeyer. LE BALLET ESPAGNOL By Edouard Manet The Master Impressionists [ Chapter I ] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER I MPRESSIONIST! What particular kind of a picture does this word bring to your mind? Are you of those who think that any picture in which the paint is laid on with the palette knife, any picture that takes liberties enough with conven¬ tional rules to astonish or even frighten you, comes under this heading? Let us clear the way of all these ideas. The Im¬ pressionists have enough to answer for without adding the vagaries of inferior imi¬ tators. The Impressionists were but a small group of contemporaries. Different author¬ ities include different men, but a fairly broad list is the following: Manet, Claude Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne, Raffaelli, Berthe Morisot, Bazille, Guillaumin, Eva Gonzales, Caillebotte, Forain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt. Recruits joined now and then, some to be¬ come deserters later on; but the old guard, those who opened up the way, are the Im¬ pressionists, Master Impressionists, if you prefer. Impressionism takes its place among the things of the past in the history of art. It is a closed chapter. Today the fireworks are over, the subject finished; the fierce battles did their work in developing the artists. What the future will say it is hard to tell, but one thing is sure, the study of it is most interesting, most broadening. Whether we go into ecstacies or not over THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LOLA DE VALENCE By Edouard Manet —Collection Camondo BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 5 PORTRAIT OF EDOUARD MANET By Fantin-LaTour —Courtesy Art Institute, Chicago the pictures painted by these men, depends upon our nat¬ ural tastes, but we ought at least to know about the m, who they were, what they did and why they did it. Curi¬ osity led me to the study of their works, not a spontane¬ ous liking. As it is not easy to adopt the vision of another (I question whether one can, by sheer power of will, or by concentration of nerve force, compel oneself to see the phe¬ nomenon of the w o r 1 d as others see it), I find, with all my effort, perhaps because of it, I am unable to put myself in rapport with them. I am almost always more interested in the way they have done a thing than in the thing itself This ought not to discourage me if the advice the good Sis¬ ley gave is good: “Do not find fault with the peasant who sincerely likes a chromo. One can always make Ins artistic e d uc a t i o n, but one can do nothing with him who ad¬ mires a chef d’oeuzre because it is the mode." So there is hope for us who enjoy other things, just as bad undoubtedly as many of these. “The essential is to feel something beautiful,” as Sisley went on to say. One cannot love art and really understand it un¬ less one is an eclectic; one cannot sin¬ cerely go into equal ecstacies before the “ Odalisque” of Ingres, and a still-life by Cezanne. Repeated visits to exhibitions of Im¬ pressionist works, a study of their purposes and of their lives, and the opinions and judgments gained from others, have given me a feeling of admiration for the sin¬ cerity of the men who never once gave up their ideals to please the public. This very sincerity makes their work impressive whether one likes it or not. Each one of them had something definite to express, so we must not condemn them because they choose to express it in their own way and not in ours. They are, too, in a certain way, our masters, for most of the young painters of our time have been their ad¬ mirers, sometimes to excess. Having ridiculed their works for so long, the time has now come when we should study them, not merely to flatter ourselves at their expense, but study them as the works of serious students, who were in¬ novators of a virulent movement. Usually 6 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS GIRL WITH A PARROT By Edouard Manet —Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York our self-satisfaction will not allow us to admit that we have anything to learn from new movements in art, about which we are too ready to talk in generalities and dis¬ miss with disdain through our mischievous ignorance. It is not from the observation of a few isolated pictures of any or all of the Impressionists that one acquires definite ideas of their aims, and it is only after the study of many works painted in the various periods of the movement that one begins to comprehend their purposes. It seems almost impossible to approach the Impressionists with an open mind, ready to look at them as we would look at beautiful scenery, or listen to a jolly tune. We must study them ; we must criticize them; we must learn something from them; we must analyze the emotion they give us. Then we look clever and pat our¬ selves on our backs and say, "I see how he did it—won¬ derful !” Whether it is the artist who did it, or we who saw, that is wonderful, we do not stop to analyze. If we could approach the study of the Impressionists more as a child would, forgetting for the time being the ideas and mental visions which we have acquired from other men, and not permit the men¬ tal picture of a Rembrandt, a Rubens or an Ingres, a Corot or a Cazin, to inter¬ vene, it would be fairer to them. There should be little difficulty in doing this, for we do it unconsciously when we look at the gay colors of autumn foliage, or at chil¬ dren romping in the sunlight. I do not dare claim that this was my mental attitude. Had it been, I feel sure it would have been my gain. The Impressionists were greatly gifted, and many of them would have left glorious works even if they had stayed in traditional paths, hut they refused to be bound by conven¬ tional laws, and then, as always, the man who ventured to depart from the conven¬ tional road sufifered. He had the jeers and jibes of the public and the ridicule of the press against him. This was particularly so with the Impressionists. There were no words to express the scorn and disdain felt for them. The fights grew so bitter that BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEY ER 7 Zola, a reporter on I’Evenement at that time, hacl his favorable criticisms torn and thrown in his face on the street, and more serious still, lost his position through de¬ fending- them. The war still rages, but spasmodically; only the other day 1 read: “Manet and Monet illustrate the most in¬ famous doctrine, materialism, and each canvas blasphemes the immortality of the soul. Every time they touched the palette they demoralized the public, these anar¬ chists of the brush.” But this is only one voice among the many. The onslaught of the critics is now dwindling away; prices are soaring and “All's well” with the Impres¬ sionists, or, rather, with those who had the temerity to rec¬ ognize their worth. The role the Impressionists have played in the world of art is easily exaggerated or disparaged. What they have revealed of truth is bound to live, as all sincere effort, all labor con¬ formably accomplished, not by ambition, sooner or later finds its justification. Had the truths they enunciated been expressed with less dis¬ dain for recognized pictorial quality, the public suspicion of their works would have been overcome long ago. If it is true that, “In the history of art, masters are to be judged by their influence as well as by their achieve- ments,” it may be useful for us to realize at the beginning of our talk that the Impres¬ sionists have influenced the later art of the world. Per¬ haps it may be well to- go back to the beginning, to fol¬ low this little band of men as they freed themselves from the trammels of the past and gradually made their appeal to the public taste. My first idea was to confine myself to the pictures of the Caillebotte Collection at the Luxembourg, but this is manifestly unfair to both the artists and the reader, for this collection was made in the midst of the battles by an artist who was the strongest sort of a partisan and one of them himself. They are mostly early works, and, with a few exceptions, hardly the canvases one ought to judge the Impressionists by. I have, for this reason, broadened the scope and drawn our illustrations from the col¬ lections in Paris—the Louvre, the Luxem- BOY WITH SWORD By Kclouard Manet —Courtesy Metropolitan Museum, New York BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER i i LE VIEUX MENDIANT By Edouard Manet bourg, the Moreau-Nelaton (Musee des Arts Decora- tifs), the Petit Palais, the Comondo, shortly to be in¬ stalled in the Louvre, and from collections of the artists themselves; from Berlin, from the American museums at New York, Chicago, Bos¬ ton, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo, etc., and from private own¬ ers. In taking up the history of Impressionism, try and place yourself in the mental condi¬ tion of the public of fifty years ago. The art world had been upset by two compara¬ tively recent movements. The first was “Romanticism”; the second was “Realism,” whose battles of observation were fought by Delacroix, Courbet, with the Barbizon School following. Each of these groups, Romanticists and Realists, were at the beginning independent artists who were drawn together by mutual tastes, comrade¬ ship of the studios or by personal likings. Just as we have our groups today. Of course, tracing the artistic activities of a century is not quite as simple an affair as this, for the divisions are not so plainly marked. These movements did not stop suddenly. The end of one and the begin¬ ning of another overlapped, and an artist might progress from one to another, as did most of the Impressionists, or take what suited him personally from each, for there is no sudden, chance discovery in art. A number of years later we find them doing homage to Delacroix, in a picture that Fantin-Latour painted at the death of Dela¬ croix. There was nothing revolutionary about the picture in itself, but it is impor¬ tant because of the men who were grouped together. They were Delacroix’ strongest admirers, both writers and painters— Cordier, Duranty, Legros, Fantin-Latour. Whistler, Champfleury, Manet, Bracque- mond, De Balleroy and Baudelaire. But to go back to ourselves. The long- suffering public had been aroused to protest against the Romanticists, called them out¬ laws because of their break from the aca¬ demic, then raged against the Realists, against Courbet, whose realism offended it, unanimously declared against Rousseau and Millet, and did not feel altogether pleasant toward Corot, when up came this unpleas¬ ant bunch to arouse its fury, with its choice of subjects, and reprehensible way of paint¬ ing them. The public was tired of shocks and just beginning to understand and enjoy what was put before it. It understood a land¬ scape when it was as it should be—skies blue, clouds gray, trees green, shadows black ; and as for subjects, mythology, alle¬ gory, Greek and Roman history, the Bible, were good enough for it. But here were men painting impossible, low subjects; just ordinary people, in their ordinary attitudes, in their ordinary surroundings ; no carefully posed studio pictures, still-life nudes; no respect for beauty, no “architectural” scenes of nature; simply fleeting impressions of nature, not as it actually was, but as it im- THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS A U CAFE By Edouard Manet pressed the painter. Their mechanical part of the work was offensive, too. The brushes of the old masters, lightly laden, glided, swept over their canvases, broadly or min¬ utely, as the exigencies of the case de¬ manded ; but these men threw the paint at the canvas; they used their palette knives or anything else handy; they had no respect for traditions; they honored every rule in the breaking of it. No wonder the poor, ignorant public, filled with prejudices, fought them as they had fought Corot, Daubigny, Rosseau, Millet, Troyon, Har- pignies and their predecessors; but it was a lounder, more violent fight. It is barely possible that these young men enjoyed the fight, and furthermore, teased the poor pub¬ lic by intentionally shocking it; for it was more in their subjects that they offended, in the beginning, than in their manner of painting them. We will see later that their astonishing methods of painting came grad¬ ually, one naturally leading to another. To go back to Realism. As Courbet preached it, it was to see things by the senses, more or less a sordid affair, while Barbizon men saw the poetical side of real things. Both the sordid and poetical in¬ terpretations had one result in common— the artist ceased imitating dead men and looked at life. Let us now suppose ourselves to he in the BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER position of the public of 1859 to 1862. We know of some of the men who later on are to become sponsors for Impressionism. We have seen a few pictures by Pissarro, Claude Monet, and a few of the others, but without any great excitement. We have seen several by Manet that have sent pre¬ monitory thrills down our spines, or per¬ haps more correctly speaking, a slight rush of angry blood to our heads; but, all in all, we lv been more interested in the “ac- credhv-d works of art” than in any efforts by new men. Fate is gradually drawing our group together, although in the year 1859 few of them were known to each other. Manet, who was about twenty-six, and older than any of the others, except Pissarro, and the most intellectual, unless 1 3 it be Degas, had already studied six years under Couture, quarreling with the master from the first day, but staying because he felt he was the best teacher he could find in Paris. After leaving Couture he trav¬ eled in Germany, Italy and Holland, copy¬ ing the old masters as he journeyed. He continued to copy them at the Louvre on his return to Paris, where in 1859 we find him painting clever copies of Goya, Valas- quez, Hals and others—copies that m a y turn up later as originals, so s p i r i t e d were they. Manet at this time was deeply under the influence of Goya, and perhaps through his admiration for Goya we can get an idea of Manet himself. Sir Claude Phillips, in speaking of Goya, says: “In Spain Goya stands out all solitary, the strongest and the most disquieting, the COMBAT DE TAUREAUX By Edouard Manet THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS i 4 DEUX DANSEAU&E Ly E. De(,nj most arresting master of his time; vivid, in¬ tense, almost beyond bearing, in the char¬ acterization of his sitters; the most capri¬ cious, the most ironical, the crudest, and yet the most ardent in sympathy, that the world has seen. As a true Spaniard he descends from Velasquez; nay, as portrait- est, has even touches of El Greco; vet in his ruthless analysis of humanity, in his lyrical pessimism, in the fierceness and the yearning of his passion, he is essentially of the nineteenth century. “And therefore it is only now that, look¬ ing back upon that time, we are able to estimate at their true value the keenness of his vision, the lightning swiftness and sure¬ ness of his interpretation, the extraordinary power of his art to penetrate, to overpower, to hold captive even those whom it indef¬ initely wounds and repels.” Manet's manner at this time was imbued with the Spaniards and Hol¬ landers. Later on we will see him throw off one influence after another, but just now in 1859 the influence is shown in the sombreness, with vivid contrasts of extreme bold¬ ness, in the division of light and shade, in the classicism and in the clear daring; in the sharp accent of the tones and in the energy of the contours. There is, too, a breadth of shoulders, a haughty distinc¬ tion in his pictures of this pe¬ riod. He noted on the back of each of some studies he made during these vears (“L’etudiant de Salamanque,” “Moise,” “Sauve des Eaux>” “La Toilette” and “La Prom¬ enade”) all that the masters of his choice had taught him; honest and interesting. Cour¬ bet's realism was interesting him intensely and shows its effect in the “Buveur d’Ab¬ sinthe,” where Courbet’s blacks and grays are grown rhythmical. Its freedom is re¬ markable, considering that he was so short a time freed from the Couture influence. It pictures a man, wrapped in a brown cloak; everything about him shows the moral and physical effect of absinthe. It is a solid work, and harmonious in coloring, but was nevertheless rejected by the Salon of 1859. In 1861, where we find him still copying at the Louvre, he had better luck with the portrait of his father and mother, and “Joueur de Guitare.” This later won him Honorable Mention, in spite of the jeers of his old master Couture, and can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. M. Proust says of this particular picture: “This is a work which has no superior in point of vigor in any gallery. The treat¬ ment of the face and hands, the delicate grayish shades of the clothing, the accurate BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER i 5 coloring' of the green seat, and the fresh¬ ness of the still-life in the foreground, baf¬ fle criticism.” It is painted in a scale of gray and black tones and in daring brushwork for the time. The subject is a Spaniard, wear¬ ing a sombrero with a handkerchief wound around it, a blue jacket, gray trou¬ sers and soft shoes, seated on a green bench, strumming an accompaniment on his guitar to the song he is singing. The man be¬ longed to a troupe of Spaniards who were dancing in Paris at the time. It was the same troupe that gave Manet his "Le ballet Espagnol,” where he shows, or suggests, eight or ten dancers. 1 he two principal ones are dancing, accompanying themselves on castanets; the others are resting or talk¬ ing. A bouquet of the period, with its sur¬ rounding white paper, lies on the floor in front. Three years later he paint¬ ed another Spanish scene, “Combat de Taureux.” There are three of these bull fights listed among his important pictures. The one we have chosen is the best known and is at the moment when the bull has overthrown a picador and his horse. The toreadors are trying to attract the bull's attention; other picadors are on their horses, lances in hand. The spectators in the stand are in full light, and reach nearly to the top of the picture. In this he has fear¬ lessly treated the type of not only the men in the arena but the h(alf frenzied crowd around the ring. He painted this scene as he saw and felt it. He seldom either saw or felt the best side of things, and for that reason “The Boy with a Sword” (Enfant a Av THEATRE I’Epee) (1861), where there By e. Degas is no woman, no low haunt of Paris, contains the best there was in Manet, be¬ cause there was nothing to excite the worst. It is well worth a visit to the Metropolitan Museum to see this little urchin, with short, stubby hair, ragged coat and beautiful blue stockings, carry a sword in its scabbard nearly as big as himself. There is no riot¬ ing of color, although the arrangement is for the purpose of securing certain effects of color. Manet was a dabster at the man¬ ipulation of oil color. George Moore says, “He never has and never will be excelled” at that. “L’enfant au chien” (1861) is another boy picture. This time the boy is taking something from a basket to give to the dog, whose head shows at the right of the pic¬ ture. This was successful from the critics’ point of view. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER i 7 Still one more boy, masquerading as a soldier, was painted about this time— “Le dfre” (1861). The light falls full upon him, showing the colors of his trousers (red), belt (white), jacket (blue), and a strap on his cap (yellow) juxtaposed with¬ out shade or transition, and still it is all a harmonious whole. This was also success¬ ful for very much the same reason that the boys with the sword and dog were. There was nothing about them to call forth the wrath of the critics, while the portrait of his father and mother was more revolu¬ tionary and aroused comment. “La Musique aux Tuileries ” (i860) shows the Spanish influence plainly in the shadows cast by the trees. Many of Manet's pictures are living documents of the society, the manners, the costumes and customs of the Second Empire. In looking at this group of fashionable people, listen¬ ing to the music in the Tuileries Gardens, we get quite an idea of the people as they appeared in their tall silk hats and the crinolines of the middle of the Second Em¬ pire. Among the standing men are por¬ traits of Manet, Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier. There is an amusing, unfinished picture in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, of children playing in the Tuileries. The chil¬ dren recall the ventriloquist’s puppets of our childhood, and still, with all their ab¬ surdity, there is a something in the picture. “Lola de Valence” is a stunning picture, with eyes full of life. The white veil, blue neckerchief and the skirt are painted freely. It belongs to the Camondo Collection, which was bequeathed to the Louvre by M. le Comte I de Camondo not long ago, and contains some wonderfully interesting can¬ vases of the later works of the Impression¬ ists, as the Moreau-Nelaton Collection in the Musee des Arts Dccoratifs contains some of the earlier. In was of this picture that Baudelaire, one of Manet’s first friends, wrote: VOITURE AUX COURSES By E. Degas THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS i 8 AFRES LE BAIN By E. Bey as Entre tant dc beautes que partout on pent voir, Je comprends bien, amis, que le desire balance; Mais on voit scintiller dans Lola de Valence, Le charme inattendu d'un bijou While copying in the Louvre Manet made the acquaintance of two young girls, sisters, great-granddaughters of Fra¬ gonard, Berthe and Edna Morisot. Berthe Morisot, the one we are interested in, later married Manet's brother Eu¬ gene, but kept the name Mori¬ sot as her noin de brosse. Be¬ fore meeting Manet at the Louvre, she had already stu¬ died with Corot. It was he who taught her to bathe her landscapes, her figures and her still-lifes in air, and who opened to her the difficult study of values. At this time Berthe Mori- ■ se et noir. sot’s pictures speak of Corot, but under the superficial resemblances can already be dis¬ tinguished the rare qualities of a feminine grace, an elegance and a distinction up to that time unknown; but it was in frequent¬ ing the Louvre that Berthe Morisot achieved her real artistic education. In cooving the old masters, preferably Rubens and Veron¬ ese, she audaciously added her own charm¬ ing personality to them. Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, even in those days a lonely, solitary man, was prob¬ ably off by himself in the great gallery, copying Italian Primitives, particularly Fra Angelicos, or painting Spartan Youths, or Walls of Babylon. His pictures show him still to be imbued with the traditions of the ancient masters, but he has made them serve to express his own extremelv modern ideas. He had studied at the Beaux-Arts under Ingres and Lamothe and had been to America before we hear of him as copy¬ ing at the Louvre. It was all technique with him, until, a little later than this, he fell under the influence of Corot, who gave him, among other things, a love for grays. He was a Realist in i860 when he painted ‘‘American Cotton Broker’s Office in New Orleans.” Some of his pictures of this ROUTE DU BAS-BREAU (FORET DE FONTAINEBLEAU) By Claude Monet —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs -\v^v.\ VV '-- CHASSE—MAREE A L’ANCHRE; ROUEN By Claude Monet —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee cles Arts Decoratifs Z A AND AM—HOLLAND By Claude Monet —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee ties Arts Decoratifs BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 £ time are intense with expression and pow¬ erful modeling. There are some admirable heads, one of a curious man with a high hat. Degas is quite in keeping with the men with whom his name is always associated, in the earnestness of his efforts, in the tremendous force and precision of his de¬ sign and in his unrelenting strength and directness. His version of life is a power¬ ful and uncompromising statement, not al¬ ways over-pleasant, although the vibrating splendor of his color is always exquisite in its dainty beauty. It is in his color, which in part he owed to them, that he is allied with the Impressionists; otherwise, al¬ though he has taken part in all the exposi¬ tions, he has stayed very much apart. His subjects run the extraordinary gamut of the washerwoman, the ballet girl and the fat housewife washing herself. He paints his vulgar subjects without any attempt to prettify them; they are exactly what they are—brutal, cruel, distorted, ugly. Often¬ times his ballet girls and washerwomen are deformed by hard work or exercise and distinctly ugly; but he knows it. Had he taken these vulgar subjects, with their coarsely muscled legs, commonplace heads and ugly features, and tried to idealize them into Greek figures and painted them in the grand style, then indeed would they have been vulgar. His pictures are frequently a sermon. For instance, the realness of the degradation of the woman in “Uabsinthe” is so horribly true that it is a lesson in human degeneration. Not that he meant M AKIN E By Claude Monet —Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 2 2 LES COQUELICOTS, ARGENTEUIL —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs By Claude Monet t to preach; he is entirely concerned with the putting on canvas of the truth of his im¬ pression of the model, particularly in regard to movement. His passion for the painting of the move¬ ment of horses led him early to painting scenes of the race course. His choice here was for the lean-necked, prancing, thor¬ oughbred. He caught the movement of the bounding muscles of his horses, the rhythm of a gesture; his jockeys were a part of their horses, as a good jockey should be. The subtle gradations of color are as nerv¬ ous and alive as are his thoroughbreds. But we are getting ahead of our times. Many of these things we have said of Degas came as he progressed. Just now he is laying the foundation at the Louvre for this progression. In speaking of Manet, Berthe Morisot, Degas, Whistler, Legros and others as working at the Louvre, reminds me of an interesting recent talk by Henri Farge on this subject, a rough translation of which is as follows: “It is not to the Louvre that they go nowadays for teaching, but to certain studios where they find a cult of masters less redoubtable, less exigent on the subject of modeling. For example, the ancient masters held that modeling gave the life; it was a capital point with them. Those who have excelled in this very difficult art have been the great masters. There were before our day masters who knew how to compose works full of charm, living, light, adroit, moving, raised almost to the sub¬ lime; but they were those only who knew how to paint. Rembrandt, Chardin, Ver¬ meer, Van Evck, Watteau, Titian, Tintor- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 23 etto, Poussin, Ingres, Goya, all knew the importance of this problem, and from its solution radiated their astonishing mas¬ tery.” He goes on to say: “The poetic license of a painter has fallen, little by little, into discredit. This charming and rare taste, which presided at the poetical inventions, at the ravishing spectacles of which the old masters were the magnificent impresarios, this personal taste is almost lost. The greatest truth and ecstacy hid themselves under affected artifices. One feels it in the two charming infants which, with their dog, occupy the center of the ‘ Pelevins d'Em- maus' of Veronese; in the allegory of the ‘Marquis d'Avalos’ by Titian; in the ‘Concert Champetre’ of Giorgione, where a young page makes music before two of his sisters. These works go beyond the borders of the frame. They are works of poesy and of radiancy, where the beauty of the nude form allies itself to the majesty of the landscape and of the great trees; where the luster of velvets, of beautiful stuffs, helps to make for voluptuousness of the senses.” Henri Farge asks: “By what road can we find again this beautiful source of strong and ideal classical virtue, that is tradition itself , without which there is no true taste ?” He says, too, that “It is curious to re¬ mark that those who have been the most in love with liberty and freedom, who have successively rejected all the rules, and have neglected design and perspective as too learned and too primitive, are also those who have invented the most strict tech- LE PORT DU CHEMIN DE FER A ARGENTEUIL By Ciaude Monet —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 24 nique. In escaping from the hard neces¬ sities of modeling, they have encountered boundaries so contracted that they would puzzle most men.” Then he suggests a remedy. “How can one enter one’s atelier except by the esca- lier de service? One does not recommend coming under the domination of the old masters any more than under the new, but those who rail most at the first condition are often most under the second. If, dur¬ ing the first years of his study, the student would follow the example of Rembrandt, who at thirty-two was still copying con¬ scientiously the smallest details of his model, he might consider painting as a means and not as an end.” But to get back to our Impressionists, who are really drawing together faster than we are following them. During part of this time, Claude Monet was at the coast, near Havre, painting with a group of men under the supervision of Boudin, who, in a way, with Jongkind, Lepine and Cals, are percursors of Impressionism, just as Corot was. Cals, a dozen years ahead of Millet and Courbet, painted the humble joys and sorrows of the common people; Jongkind, Boudin and Lepine were preoccupied with rendering light. Claude Monet painted with Boudin, off and on, from boyhood, and gratefully admits that he owes much to him. We will hear a great deal more of Claude Monet as we go along, for his name is almost synonymous with that of the word Impressionism; but during these few years leading to the movement he was little known. In 1862 Claude Monet, although only twenty-two years of age, had seen some- CARRIERES SAINT-DENIS By Claude Monet ■Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 2 5 LE CANAL —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs By Alfred Sisley thing- of life. He had done two years’ mili¬ tary service in Africa, had earned enough money by his talent for caricaturing to start him toward Paris, where he entered Gleyre’s studio and met Bazille, a man of some talent and a little money, who came from the Midi and was doomed to die an early death in the battle of Beaune-la- Rolande, during the Franco-Prussian war. Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Pierre Auguste Renoir were fellow pupils. Renoir was the son of a poor tailor at Limoges and had been earning his living by painting porcelains. He was the gay, happy one, the wit, full of the joie de vivre. He amused himself even in his painting. He had a saintly horror of rules. His first offer to the Salon (about this time) was refused. Sisley was of English origin, a son of a moderately rich man. He and Claude Monet were more alike than any two others of the group. Pissarro, the son of a Jew¬ ish trader, came from St. Thomas in the Danish Islands. He had tried to carry art to Venezuela, but found it an unwanted commodity. He had pictures at the Salon as early as 1859; they were painted in a scale a little advanced for the time, in heavy, obtrusive paint. Almost all of the pictures Pissarro painted before the war of 1870, disappeared while his little house at Louveciennes was occupied by the enemy. Probably they were burned, as no trace of them exists. These four—Claude Monet, Sisley, Pis¬ sarro and Renoir—entered Gleyre's studio THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 2 6 LE DILIGENCE DE LOUVECIENNE S —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee cles Arts Decoratifs By CamUIe Bissarro in good faith, expecting to learn something, but they could make little of the instruc¬ tions they received there. Gleyre cared nought for air; his creations were con¬ gealed statues and his “Remember the An¬ tique” did not particularly appeal to them. Poor Gleyre must have had a lively time, for they were revolutionists from the first. Whistler was another of his troublemakers. It was not long before Claude Monet per¬ suaded the others to leave Gleyre’s. He and Renoir induced the good Sisley to go out to Fontainebleau, where they led a (care free, gay life. The story is that Claude Monet and Renoir added to their income of nothing a goodly sum given them by an unscrupulous dealer for beauti¬ ful Theodore Rousseau’s, and that they painted very good ones too. At this time Corot was doing magnificent work in the neighborhood and they came under his spell. His influence can be easily traced in their works of this time. Diaz took a special fancy to Renoir and gave him lessons. Pissarro followed Corot and Millet. From Millet they learned to love the open air; from Corot they imbibed the taste for simple subjects and for ac¬ curate values. How closely akin the Im¬ pressionists are to the men of 1830 can be felt in comparing the landscapes of Corot with some of the early ones by Sisley, Monet, and Pissarro now in the Moreau- Nelation collection. Paul Cezanne and Armand Guillaumin were also in Paris, but at the Academie Suisse. Guillaumin was the son of a shop keeper and himself a clerk selling lingerie. He spent his spare time looking at the pic¬ tures in the Louvre and the Luxembourg, BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 27 and when he changed the clerkship in the lingerie shop for that of one in a railroad office, he had earlier hours and was able to draw evenings and Sundays at the Academie Suisse, where we find him. Cezanne's pictures have left the impres¬ sion on my mind of a big, uncouth, over¬ grown boy, with none of the niceties of life about him; a barborously naive and “un¬ kept” sort of a person with a good heart, possibly, certainly nothing sentimental or emotional in his makeup; a humble follower of the more famous Impressionists. I seem to be all wrong in my impression, except in the sentimental-emotional part, for he was the son of a rich banker who lived on a beautiful estate just out of Aix-en-Prov¬ ence. He graduated from the college at Aix (where he made an enduring friendship with Zola), then passed his first examinations in law, but gave that study up in disgust and was taken by his father, in 1862, to Paris, where he entered l’Academie Suisse. Pissarro painted a portrait of Cezanne, later on, that does not fit my mental picture, but as he knew the man and I did not, I think we can take his word for it; at any rate, I never heard of Cezanne suing Pissarro for libel. This por¬ trait was exhibited in a retro¬ spective exhibition in Paris last fall and the New York Sun’s description of it is as follows: “A savage portrait of Ce¬ zanne, in which, like a sallow little Syrian huckster, or a gnome in dull glee, he is hunched up against a back¬ ground of green dust, his neck collapsing in his coat collar, and his hands clasped for warmth. It dominates one's attention by the sly, eager little black eyes that seem to burn into one with curi¬ osity.” There are others who are called Impres¬ sionists, but they are not joined as closely to the movement as the men I have spoken of. Fantin-Latour, Whistler, Legros are always hovering around the group. They were all followers of Courbet, studied at the Louvre and later shared the ridicule thrown at the Impressionists, although they never really participated in their methods. Whistler was a friend of Manet and Degas, while Fantin-Latour and Legros were special friends of Manet. It is inter¬ esting to compare the portraits that Fantin- Latour and Legros painted of Manet. The FEMME EPLUCHANT DES LEGUMES By Camille Pissarro BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 29 one we illustrate by Fantin now belongs to the Art Institute, Chicago, and shows him very much as one would expect to see him, after seeing his work and reading a descrip¬ tion that Muther wrote of him: “Manet had a passion for the world, light and grace¬ ful figure, blonclish heard, deep blue eyes filled with the fire of youth, a refined, clever face, aristocratic hands and a manner of great urbanity sparkling intellect, vivid and sarcastic; he worshiped modernity and the piquant frou-frou of toilets. He was very popular in the best of Parisian society." There is still another portrait of Manet in Fantin’s “Hommage a Delacroix." Different authorities join different men with the group such as Gustave Colin, Boul- lard, Desboutin, de Nittis, etc , etc., but my idea has been to confine myself to the Mas¬ ter Impressionists who fought the first bat¬ tles adding only the few later ones who were in the thick of some of the fights. There are two women, beside Berthe Morisot, who are closely identified with the movement, Mary Cassatt and Eva Gonzales, the former, an American, the only pupil of Degas. Miss Cassatt is an Impressionist in her color only. She has painted some beau¬ tiful visions of motherhood and children; her art is the art of a woman, not the art of a woman aping a man. She has not fallen into the usual pit laid for the descendants of Madam Le Brun. She neither embellishes or idealizes her subjects. Eva Gonzales, a gifted pastellist, joined later as a pupil of Manet, his favorite pupil, it is said. At any rate, he sent a picture of TROUVILLE. MAREE HAUTE By Eugene Boudin o THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LARD ET HARENG —Courtesy Musee clii Louvre By Felix Aclolphe Cals FEMME NUE COUCHEE 8UR UN CANAPE By Pierre-Auguste Renoir BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 3 i LE BAS8IN DU COMMERCE AU HAVRE By Eugene Boudin her at work at her easel to the Salon of 1870. She, like Bazille, died young, but lived long enough to throw the light and charm of her art on Impressionism. Jean Frangois Raffaelli, who was only in his “teens” at this time (1859-1862) may have been singing in a theatre or a church choir in order to earn enough to keep him¬ self as a student in the Beaux Arts under Gerome. Jean Louis Forain and Flenri de Tou¬ louse-Lautrec came from the school of Degas. Forain, in reality, had but two masters, Manet and Degas, although he came from the Beaux Arts and studied un¬ der Carpeaux. That reminds me, I have been told that neither Manet nor Degas ever had men pupils. So their teaching of Forain must have been by way of influence rather than in the line of lessons. Be that as it may, Forain has made a great deal of noise in the world with his caricatures. Last summer he made Rodin's life miserable and stirred up a great deal of public feeling by showing Rodin in the chapel connected with his palace, surrounded by models, etc., not quite appropriate to a chapel. It is needless to say that the great master Rodin was not hurt by the noise, but it was a cruel pleasantry. Forain’s entrance into the world of cari¬ catures came after his connection with the Impressionists. At that time he painted like a sombre Degas, even then a little inclined to exaggeration of type, carrying the exag¬ geration almost to the caricature. His taste in painting ran to the theatre and the night haunts of Paris, very much as did Degas’. LE DfiJEUNER SUR L'HERBE —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Mvsee des Arts Decoratifs By fidouard Manet LA LECON DE MUSIQUE (1870), M. ZACHARIE ASTRUC By Edouard Manet —Collection M. Henri Rov.art The Master Impressionists [ Chapter 11 ] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER I N THIS little preliminary glimpse we have had of the men, not yet formed into a group, in this year of 1862, there has been a surprising similarity. They were all strong men mentally, who had all had a thorough training in academic rules, even if they did not follow them. They reacted against conventions; they joined in the revolt against Romanticism and enrolled themselves under Courbet’s banner, then fell at the feet of Corot. In each step they took, the master was the initiator and it was through his eyes that they saw nature for the time being, but never in the same fashion, for each had something to say for himself. Take as an example Courbet and Manet. If we had the time and space we conld take any one of the others as a peg to hang the talk upon. Courbet was trying to effect in figure painting the same transformation that had taken place in landscape under the influ¬ ence of the English school. His work was also a revolt against the conventions, but his figures were not living, his waves were at a standstill, and that was not as Manet 36 T II E M ASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PORTRAIT d'TDOUARD MANET By Alphonse Legros — Courtesy Musee clcs Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit-Palais BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 3 7 saw either waves or figures. Probably neither did Courbet, but Manet’s power of selection and his use of colors to create the impression he wished was greater than Courbet's, and so he went beyond Courbet in his expression of life or the reality of things and people. Then, too, Manet saw life as a nobler thing than Courbet, and so purged Courbet's realism of some of its grossness. Later on Courbet said of one of Manet’s pictures, “The Olympia," that it was like the Queen of Spades coming from a bath. Manet answered that Courbet’s ideal of art was a billiard ball. These gentle remarks would lead one to imagine that Manet’s admiration for Courbet had soon ceased. We could go on indefinitely with these comparisons, for critics find affiliation be¬ tween each of the Impressionists and men of other times. When they say that the first manner of Manet was analogous with a Goya, Velasquez and Hals, that Renoir’s art comes straight from Watteau and Boucher, that Claude Monet is a descend¬ ant of Claude Lorraine and rivals Turner, or that Berthe Morisot has inherited the palette of Fragonard, or even that Degas came from David and Ingres, they do not mean that one would confound the work of these masters. That they have descended from some one can hardly be held against them as a reproach, seeing that every painter has always had a precursor, a support upon whom he has based his be¬ ginnings. A great artist, whatever may be his origin, does not draw everything from himself. He only creates new resources for his art, broadens the territory and works differently from his predecessors. He sub- Rcading from left to right (upper row): Scholderer, Renoir, Zola, Maitre, Bazille, Monet; (lower row): Manet, Artruc. VATELIER DES BATIGNOLLES —Courtesy Musee du Luxembourg By Eantin-Laiour T II E MASTER I M PRESS I O A I ST S PORTRAIT DU PURE DE IT ARTISTE By Alphonse Leaves — Courtesy Musee cle Tom BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 3 9 mits to many influences, that of his ances¬ tors and his immediate surroundings not being the least among them. The influence of the education, good or had, that he received, is a great factor, and favors or retards the blossoming of his natural talents. Pictures have been painted since the Egyptians first perpetuated history by dec¬ orating their tombs and palace walls, to say nothing of the Arabic, Indian, Chinese and Persian efforts. For centuries upon centuries men have yearned to express their love for the beauty of the human form, for growing grass and trees, for moving clouds, and the wonder is that there is anything left to discover sufficiently new. astonishing or shocking to make the public sit up and take, notice. We now find our young men drawing together through their friendships, made at the Louvre, at Gleyre’s or through their visits to Fontainebleau. Each in his own way was seeking to continue and complete the task of reproducing nature that Rous¬ seau, Corot, Troyon and Millet had started. It was in the next year, 1863, that a movement of artistic independence arose and sent up a protest against the powers that be, because of the wholesale refusals of admittance at the Salons. It was then Napoleon III stepped in and commanded that they he allowed to exhibit, by them¬ selves, if necessary. This exhibition was called the “Salon des Refuses’’ and was held in the same building as the Salon. Paris laughed itself into hysterics over the canvases of such men as Claude Monet, Manet, Whistler, Cazin, Harpignies, Pis¬ sarro, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, . Fantin- Latour, Jongkind, Legros, Braequemond. and others. It is no wonder that today the public is afraid of making another mistake and so goes to the other extreme, accepting many pictures that ought to cause hysterics. Manet’s offering to the Salon des Refuses was a subject of Giorgione adapted to our time. It was first called “Le bain’ but is now known as “Lc dejeuner sur I'herbe.” It was the bringing together of the nude and modern costume, a thing both Courbet and Fantin had tried without causing the horror that this picture did. In it Manet tried to express life rather than beauty. There was no effort to attain higher imag¬ inary qualities, no effort to ennoble the subject, just a frank, fearless, decisive statement on canvas of his impression of a scene that would shock one if run into unexpectedly, just as the picture shocks many now as it hangs in the Moreau- Nelaton Collection. You must remember that the public was accustomed at that time to the idealized nudes, very different, in¬ deed, from these two women, the one fiTUDE DE NU By Fantin-Latour —Collection Moreau —Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs \ BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 4 1 splashing in the water of the river, the other seated on the bank near two young men (the one on the left was a portrait of Armand Gouzione, critic, and Inspector of the Beaux-Arts). The men in their dark coats form a background for the white flesh of the seated woman. They are evidently waiting for the bather to join them before commencing the feast spread before them. Some noise has startled them, perhaps the click of the camera, and they all look towards the intruder. The whole picture offended, chiefly in the subject, but the rules of the day were out¬ raged too. It was painted all in full light, the old-falsified shadows, that should have opposed the light, were not there. The parts that others painted in shadow were painted by tones less bright, but always in value. He had raised the key of the whole picture, for as soon as he heightened the pitch of a too low color, he was forced to heighten all the rest in exact proportion, or lose the proper values, for each color was affected by its neighbors, which made the work, in its lightness, incongruous in the midst of the other sombre and discolored pictures. It flew at the eyes. At this time there was taught in the schools a certain manner in which to dis¬ tribute the light and shade. No one thought of painting light without the obligatory accompaniment of shade. Shadows had been considered merely as parts fitted to make the lighted portions more brilliant and were put in with red or blackish color—a tone without transparency. Manet painted light on light, different tones side by side without any transition. Duret explains this so very much more clearly than I can that I take the liberty of quoting him rather fully. “According to the teaching of the studios, in order to fix the perspectives, to obtain modeling in the masses and to give their just value to cer¬ tain parts of the picture, it was necessary to use certain combinations of light and shade. Above all it was held that a number of bright tones ought not to be put side by side without graduation, and that the LA MUSIQUE AUX TUILERILS By fidouard Manet THE MAST ER IMPRESSIO NIS T S 4 2 BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER transition from the bright passages to those less bright ought to be graduated in such a way that the shades should soften the abruptness of the contrast and blend the whole together. But observe where the technique of the studios had led. Nothing indeed is rarer than the artist who is really able to paint light, to put the brillance of day on canvas; and so this technique of a constant opposition of shade and make- believe light had led to the production of works which were really all shadow, from which all true light had disappeared. The parts that were supposed to be light were too feeble to stand out from the surround¬ ing black of the shadows. This effect of gloom prevailed in almost all of the pictures of the time. Joyousness of color, brillance of clear light, the feeling of the open air, the spirit of laughing nature, had disappeared from them.” This was the beginning of the bitter war that the Impressionists waged against bitumen and obscurity, and by its winning they revolutionized the French painters’ palette. The artistic interest of this picture “Le dejeuner sur I'herbe” is great, whether we like it or not, for it is a good example of the distinct, Hat, rich values within a general tone, which are the distinguishing features of Manet’s work. It is also Manet’s first example of the quivering light that he brought to such full force later on in his “Argenteuil.” Soon after this Manet exhibited the “ Olympia” now hanging in the Louvre. The public raged. Even Manet himself felt dubious about sending it, but was persuaded by his friend, the poet Baudelaire, to do so. It caused the Salon doors to be vin¬ dictively closed to him and made him a much-talked-of young man, if not in an altogether pleasant fashion. The “Olympia" is a picture of a nude woman with flesh far more brilliant 4 3 than artists were painting flesh at that time. She is stretched out and leaning on her el¬ bow on a yellowish shawl, slightly figured with flowers. Back of her stands a negress holding a bouquet of brilliant tones, at her feet a black cat forms a bold note of contrast to the white draperies and pink flesh. This ‘Olympia’’ is a short woman, with a hard, little, vicious head, a face totally empty of expression. She is thinking of nothing; even the bouquet does not interest her. She is posed. Manet meant her to be real; in fact, reality was the sole reason for this picture, but as has been said by some clever critic, it is not a real reality but a made reality. Manet arranged the draperies and the greens, the blues and the reds, and then saw them with his own peculiar sight. It is PORTRAIT DE MLLE. J. S. By Edouard Manet 44 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PORTRAIT OF THEODORE DURET By Bdoucircl Manet not a picture of a real woman who hap¬ pened to drop into this position to rest, but a picture of a model placed on the couch by Manet, in order that he might paint her. There is intelligence of the eye, but there is also the hunt for reality. It is superbly drawn and reveals irreproachable purity of line. In “Olympia,” as in “Le dejeuner sur I'hcrbe,” he substituted an opposition of different tones for the fixed opposition of light and shade. The subject is placed in full light as though a great window were behind the painter. Because the face had no expression the public put an expression in it, and called her names; they gave extra interest to the cat, which really had no more interest in it than a spot, but that the picture was insistent¬ ly vulgar was the feeling of many and there was a great deal of opposition to its ac¬ ceptance when it was pur¬ chased, in 1890, by a commit¬ tee of admirers of Manet and offered to the State; after much wrangling it was ac¬ cepted. It now hangs in the Louvre opposite Ingres’ “Od¬ alisque,” the first of the Im¬ pressionists to enter the Louv r e’s sacred precincts. Zola has written a masterly description of “Olympia” in his “Mes Haines.” The terrific notoriety and abuse hurled at Manet closed the official doors against him, but on the other hand drew some of the younger spirits to him. There were his friends of the Louvre, Mile. Morisot and Degas. Claude Monet visited, in the spring of 1863, an exhibition of fourteen works that Manet held on the Boulevard des Italians. This was his undoing, or doing, as you please. He did not meet Manet per¬ sonally until 1866, when Zacharie Astruc took him to Manet's studio, where they formed a quick but lasting friendship. As Manet drew Claude Monet, so Claude Monet drew Sisley and his studio compan¬ ions, Renoir and Bazille, into the gradually enlarging circle of friends. Cezanne had looked up his friend Zola when he came to Paris, and they were now living together, and it was through talks with Cezanne that Zola had undertaken the campaign for Manet and his ideas. Manet was naturally pleased with Zola’s friendship, although distressed at the trouble it brought Zola in the beginning. With Cezanne and Zola came Guillaumin BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 4 5 of the Academie Suisse ; Pissarro, struck by “The Olympia,” hastened to make Manet's acquaintance, and there was Gustave Caille- botte, an amateur, who helped them so materially in the beginning by buying their pictures. These men, drawn from different parts of Paris, wished to meet regularly. Manet's studio would have been the natural place, but it was far from central and nothing but a ruin* so that was impossible. Near Manet’s home was the Cafe Guerbois, in the Batignolles quarter, on Avenue Clichy. Groups met there every evening, accident¬ ally at first, but regularly after 1866. The group enlarged until it included many earnest members. One saw there frequently Fantin-Latour, Guillemet; the engravers Desboutins and Belot; Duranty, novelist and critic; Zacharie Astruc, sculp¬ tor and poet; Lmile Zola and Cladel, the novelist; Degas and Stevens, Vignaud and Burty, l'Hermitte, Scholderer, Maitre and others. Then deserters from all camps such as Boudin, Lepine, Bracquemond, Boullard,. Cals, Gustave Colin, de Nittis, Raffaelli, Lebourg, Forain and La Touche, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Their one trait in common was their re¬ volt against art and literature. They had little in common in character. Their dif¬ ferent personalities separated them and they were of vastly different ages. Pissarro. Manet and Degas were the oldest of our particular men. Claude Monet was about twenty-six, eight years younger than Manet. Renoir was the wit. the man of many sides. Sisley the official, half dreary, good na- tured, easy-going clerk. Cezanne was heavy-witted, heavy-handed, slow moving. FEMME EFFILANT DE L’ETOUPPE By Felix Adolph Cals —Courtesy Musee du Louvre 46 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS HBLLNE (FAUST) —Courtesy Musee des Beciux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit-Palais By Fantin-Latour but intense, often taciturn; sometimes mys¬ tifying with his mixture of candor and malice, a boy in whom was concentrated the force of the southern spirit. Manet was the leader; he was the dom¬ inating influence; it was his verve and his witticisms and his strong artistic opinions that gave tone to the discussion that they started in all the naivete and enthusiasm of their youth. Zola was one of the most intrepid, the mouthpiece of the younger tendencies; a little bizarre, perhaps, but plainly showing himself as a champion for his friend Manet, the persecuted artist, re¬ jected of the Salons, dishonored according to the tenets of official art. Zola was his champion from the first and Manet's pic¬ tures are in a sense Zola’s books on canvas. In this group around Manet there were some who followed him directly, among them Eva Gonzales, his pupil, who left Chaplin to follow him. The years of meetings at the Cafe Guer- bois in familiar sittings were of great im¬ portance in the forming of the school of Impressionism. They all profited by the exchange of ideas and the encouragement they received from each other in the hard fight they were making. Manet’s free and strong manner and his light and luminous tones influenced them all, more or less, although some held tenaciously to Corot’s palette. Claude Monet, Pissarro and the judicious Sisley were of these. They worked in Corot’s gray tones. Pissarro and Berthe Morisot clung especially to Corot’s notion of the importance of values. Each one brought something. In the exchange BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 4 7 of ideas, they advanced individually but all together. No one man did it all. They began to be jeeringly called “The School of the Batignolles’’ because of these meetings at the Cafe Guerbois. As a souvenir of this time and a very valuable one, too, because of the faithful portraits of those who are represented, is a picture painted by Fantin- Latour under the title of “L’Atelier aux Batignolles” (1870) now hanging in the Luxembourg. This picture shows Manet painting at an easel, and around him are the others, Claude Monet, Renoir, Bazille and the men of letters who defended them, Zola and Zacharie Astruc. Of course painting them in a studio was an artistic license, for they never met in this way, but at the Cafe Guerbois. When Manet painted his Dejeuner sur llierbe” (1863) he was trying to paint his fig¬ ures in light; he was not sat¬ isfied with the light in his studio so he went outdoors and made notations direct from nature and then re¬ turned to his studio and paint¬ ed from the notations, as many other good artists had done and were still doing. Constable, Watts and Turner in England, Courbet and Corot, had often done this, hut even this almost direct painting from nature failed to express what Manet and the others were striving for. They -saw that their masses founded on these notations, or on indoor light, failed to express the glittering impres¬ sion of sunlight that they saw all about them, so the discus¬ sions at the Cafe Guerbois hinged on light, its intensity and the general question of luminosity. In love with reality, they went to excess. They wished to paint each person or thing in its own natural surroundings. Up to this time Manet had not paid much attention to the figure in relation to its lighting out of doors, but while visiting in the country with his artist friend, de Nittis, he painted a por¬ trait of Madam de Nittis, seated in her garden, surrounded by flower beds and with a background of trees, a real out-of-door picture. Many authorities say that the plein air movement sprang into existence with this pitcure. They all went out of doors to paint, where, as some wag said, they had “sun¬ stroke.” As I have already said, others had I/AUTOMNE , PORTRAIT DE FEMME (MERY LAURENT) By Edouard Manet —Courtesy Musee de Nancy 48 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS ETUDE DE LA JETJNE FILLE By Felix Adolph Cals —Courtesy Musee du Lonvre painted out of doors before this, but soon after this Claude Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillaumin and Renoir confined themselves exclusively to painting out of doors, while Manet did, or did not, as pleased him. In the summers he painted numerous pictures of the shore and sea at Boulogne, and one picture painted of the Universal Exposition from the top of the Trocadero is of this time. Claude Monet started to work at luminous tones as early as 1865. Renoir soon commenced to give subtle and strong effects of light. His “Lise’ of 1868—a portrait of a woman in a light dress under the trees—was his first out-of-door portrait. . It is just here that Impressionism proper begins. Manet had given them the idea of light tones unembarrassed by shade, and they had gone out of doors to paint That was enough of a start for men who were out for reality. It was not long before they made start¬ ling discoveries and tried to follow them to their logical conclusions. T hey made daily excursions into the sub¬ urbs, or to Montmartre, or to the nearby woods. Studying nature all the time, they soon began to see the fallacies of the indoor painter. From then on the evolution seems so simple, so natural; they did not find the “noble” subjects of the academies posed in the places they frequented, so painted the subjects they did find, painted them in their natural surroundings. This called down upon their heads the wrath of the public. Then when they found the subject, time was flying and probably the small boy was curious. At any rate they were more hur¬ ried than in the studio and were forced to let the details slide, which led to the impres¬ sion of the scene as it struck the eye, rather than a detailed account of it. In their haste there could be no carefully arranged sub¬ ject with minute execution; they could only try for the fleeting impression of the mo¬ ment, which they strove to substitute for the composition. In doing this there was often a big touch but wavering contour, a confusion of planes which suppressed the horizon and the effects of perspective. Many of the older masters had an intimate knowledge of perspective, of distances, of the architecture of great trees, of their vol¬ umes and of their foliage. They painted the poetry, the soul of the landscapes, and not the fugitive appearance that our men were struggling to catch. It is in this that the Impressionists differed from Claude T wrraine. Poussin and others. The painters up to this time chose some particular place BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEY ER 4 9 PORT DE LA ROCHELLE, AQUARELLE ET GOUACHE By Albert Lebourg —Courtesy Musee cles Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Pans. Petit-Palais because of its beauty and then painted it from notations or from memory, but in their studios, with plenty of time to add or embellish it as they pleased; but our men had no time to do this at a cafe or on a street corner; they painted anything that gave them a painting sensation, anything that particularly suggested light or move¬ ment. This made a vast number of subjects paintable that had never been thought to be so before. During these few years before the war between France and Germany, their great¬ est object was to see how things appeared in broad daylight. As they painted familiar scenes they saw that everything and every person was surrounded by air, by luminous dust, by the delicate vibrations that envelop all objects exposed to the fires of out-of- door light. They saw the atmosphere change momentarily the appearance of things. They saw a thousand and one things, while they looked at nature, but the thing that interested them most at this time was the ambiancy of air. They tried to paint it, to suggest it. They tried to repre¬ sent man enveloped in ambient atmosphere, in the ever changing light of reality, to catch the incessant mobility of the colora¬ tion of light. They were by no means the first to feel this desire to surround people and things with air or to show the luminous dust, the reflections, the delicate enveloping vibra¬ tions, for these problems were not unknown to the old masters; no one has rendered ambient atmosphere better than Pieter de Hoogh. There is a Carpaccio and a Veronese at the Louvre and a Canalleto at the Museum at Turin, where clear golden light plays deliciously on the rose casings of the Ducal Palace, that are, when one makes allowances for the effects of time, examples of what the men of the Cafe Guerbois were struggling to express. Pos¬ sibly the difference between their efforts THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS iMBMpf —Courtesy Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit-Palais TEMPS DE PLUIE By Albert Lebourg LA SEINE A PASSY By Stanislas Lepine —Courtesy Musee des Bcaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit-Palais BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 5 1 and those of the old masters was that the moderns realized the complexities of the problems that confronted them. They agreed among themselves that everything in nature was a succession of perspective planes and surfaces that join on to one another; that the successive sur¬ faces are limited only by the luminous vi¬ brations ; that nothing had a hard, exact contour; there were no edges in nature; there was always a hesitation between the relief, however acute it might be, and the surrounding air. To wish to determine each object by line, which isolated it from its natural surroundings, was an error only permitted in certain decorative work. That all things were seen through the vibrations of atmosphere that drowned details and blended the object with the atmosphere; that painting should not outline objects by a conventional handling which sharply de¬ taches them, but that objects should be so treated that from the lighted parts of a figure to the shaded parts, even to the deep¬ est shadow, the light should insensibly di¬ by outlines, and who regarded drawing as the principal medium of their art, color be¬ ing but an agreeable accessory. This love of the old Germans for line comes from their propensity to idealism, and to the prepond¬ erance of thought in their painting. For them color is the sensuous element of their art, while drawing alone defines the mean¬ ing and the intellectual design of the painter. The idealists have always pre¬ ferred the line, a human medium, and the realists, faithful to nature exclusively, have always preferred color. Our men, extremists always, went so far as to say, at least Claude Monet did, that drawing was an error, an artificial means of determining form. When they told Manet he could not draw, he would say, “I do not draw silly lines as they are taught in the schools; but 1 challenge any of the illustrious professors teaching there to ob¬ tain an effect of light; they cannot do it. I defy them to do it! What do they know of atmosphere, of the mobile light that en¬ velops everything around in its dazzling minish without one being able to deter¬ mine the precise point where it appears to leave the figure. They said line was an artificial element since nature does not have it, so a bas with line ! They painted in mass e s, not edges. They made their drawing more ex¬ pressive by shade than by contour. Rembrandt, Velas¬ quez and others have fine examples of blending the fi g u r e with the atmosphere in direct opposition to the old Germans, who limited their figures LA CHA8SE AUX PAPILLONS By Berthe Morisot —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee (les Arts Decoratifs THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 5 2 LE BATEAU-MOUCHE By Armand Guillaumin splendor? Ask this of the people who stick a face on the canvas just as one sticks a butterfly into a case.” And referring to a portrait by a fash¬ ionable painter, he exclaimed, “I can see he has painted an overcoat, an excellent, well-cut overcoat. But where are the lungs ? The model does not breathe be¬ neath his clothes; he has no body; he is simply a tailor's figure.” This doing away with line carried them to an extreme in the simplification of their design, but never to the violent extremes their followers have practiced. So taken up with technical difficulties were they, that they were regardless of lines, of composi¬ tion ; they had no time for picture-making; their achievements were not intended for pictures, but for studies. Pissarro said, “Execution! We regard it as nothing; it is at any rate only unimportant, art having nothing to do with it.” They were not influenced by the desire to evade difficulties, as many of their fol¬ lowers are accused of being, for they were consummate draughtsmen, as m any por¬ traits, figure pieces, etchings and pastel- drawings amply attest. You will remem¬ ber many of them passed years of their lives in academic study. They painted largely by the mass, which comprised sim¬ plified light and shade, and by the suppres¬ sion of infinite detail (which they said in place of accenting the truth of expression, drowned it) ; they tried to reproduce the natural colors of day and sunlight. In arguing that sunlight was the creative source of color, they affirmed the sover- BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 5 3 eignty of light and it is possible the name Luminist might have been more applicable to them than the name Impressionist, which was given them fonr or five years later. Radiant light formed their tocsin call. It seems strange that their advent came with the introduction of bounteous light into every part of our modern homes, and a doing away of the old schemes of sombre coloring. The tones of the old masters seem like dark shadows and are incongru¬ ous among the dainty furnishings and bright flowers of the modern house. They need the dignity of high ceilings and rich decorations, a milieu difficult to find, at least in America, today. But as I was saying, the subjects were nothing; execution was nothing; the one all-absorbing theme of conversation and ex¬ perimentation was light. It was all light, light draws as well as colors an object and light put each object in its place, giving it its proper value. An outcome of this study of out-of-door light was the strict observa¬ tion of the “law of value s.” The old painter merely painted relative values in a more or less arbitrarily determined scale; while the Impressionists undertook to paint absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as they could get it. The Spaniards, Italians and Dutch were by no means neglectful of this law, but Manet and his associates saw with the in¬ creased sensitiveness of our modern eyes and followed the laws more scientifically than the ancient masters. The result of their efforts was an in¬ tense and direct impression, the abbrevia¬ te SEINE A CHARENTON By Armancl Guillaumin THE MASTER IMPRESSIONIST S 5 6 DANSEUSE By Pierre-August Revnir BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER o / —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs BATEAUX A L’fiCLUSE DE BOUGIVAL By Alfred Sisley COUCHER DE SOLEIL A LAVACOURT By Claude Monet —Courtesy Musee des Bcaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit-Palais 58 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS “A MA MIE," SCENE DE CABARET By Toulouse-Lautrec tion of their drawing, the simplification of their figures, the treatment of all objects as masses and not as outlines. Their pic¬ tures of this time show how intense was their feeling on these subjects. Manet's are particularly strong in the subject of nature seen in flat masses. “ Olympia” is an interesting study of the distribution of values. The lights, the sheet, the flesh, the empty sack are all of one value. The face of the negress, the background, the bottom of the shoes, the black cat, are of another value. The black cat shows us the strength of all the dark values, and by this one can judge how strong all the other dark values are. In "Olympia," Manet used such bril¬ liant oppositions that the color was de¬ stroyed, for in a strong light you get bril¬ liancy and color is destroyed. It is eaten up just as broad daylight diminishes the local color. It was Manet who tried to create the impression of the thing seen by massing, the flat appearance of nature, the ambience of the air. At this time it was he who forged ahead of the others and opened the way for them to follow, but Claude Monet has since carried the idea of lost contours to the last word. His ideas on drawing are extreme; he sees the world only as a sub¬ ject of light and today he gives the impres¬ sion only, not the reality of the things themselves, but their ambiance and the changes that they submit to under the at¬ mosphere that surrounds them. But in his pictures of this time, Marines, Dejeuners, and several garden scenes, there was noth¬ ing strikingly startling, although even at BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 5 9 this early date it was not the face or the person that interested him, but the cloth¬ ing and accessories that gave him the op¬ portunity to paint effects of light and color. In his portrait, “Camille," the green and black rays of the skirt, in Japonaise the brilliant red dress with its embroideries and the Japanese fans pinned on the wall back of her. They were the real subjects of the picture. In the harmony of the decora¬ tions, in the dresses of the women, in the bits of ribbon in their hair, in the creamy white shades, in the old pieces of brass and glass or fragments of frames, in the Japan¬ ese screens, in the flowery figures in the carpets and in the brocade coverings of his furniture; in all these accessories he shows his eye to have been more sensitive than that of Courbet. The light plays in his interiors even though his design and brush are a little heavy. From 1866 he dropped figure subjects and confined himself to landscape. He had been in very good repute among the of¬ ficials, they even hung two of his marines on the line at the Salon, until he was inocu¬ lated by the germ of Impressionism, this captured him body and soul, and he has never recovered from the effects. To this day the analysis of light absorbs him. Using personal vision as a guiding rule Manet and his friends soon were trying to express what they saw. They now had light tones, free from shade, that allowed them to put on canvas the brilliant colors they saw around them. They painted the spots of light that the sun in passing through foliage threw on the ground; they painted the juicy greens of spring, not the greens that memory fixed, hut as they saw them in morning sunlight, in shade, in full noonday sun, tones that were absolutely EFFET DE NEIGE By Paul Cezanne —Collection Claude Monet BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER dissimilar, just as the flesh tones are not always rose but are determined by the light falling upon the flesh. They found there was no fixed color whatever as objects have no colors of their own, but only that which is given them by reflection of the sky and the enveloping atmosphere. They found it impossible to say with the indoor painter that objects had permanent color. They could see and prove to their own satisfac¬ tion that the outline, the color of an object painted indoors differed absolutely from the outline and the color of the same ob¬ ject painted outdoors. One scientific truth after another was discovered, and talked over. One would excitedly tell the others that a tree nearby was green, while five hundred feet away it was bluish because of the density of the luminous layers of air surcharged with the reflections of the illuminated blue of the sky, and that it was really the atmosphere that was the real subject of the picture, for 6 1 whatever was represented on the canvas existed only through the medium of atmos¬ phere. Another went still further and said that the sense of heat, of luminosity, of what one might call the vitality of the at¬ mosphere, was conveyed by color. Their efforts all centered on the study of the variations of atmosphere and light. Their aim was to reproduce these reflec¬ tions so as to give the exact impression of the color of the objects they looked at. A great part of their time was given to the discussion of these reflections and to the composition of the atmosphere between the painter and the object. Oh those were in¬ teresting days! They were getting so warm, so near to so many discoveries, that the days and nights were not half long enough. Then one day it came to them that shadows did not mean the absence of light, but rather light of a different value. In other words, colors continue their vibra¬ tion in shadows, weakened, but still ex- RACE HORSES —Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts By Edgar Degas 62 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PAQUET DE MER A fiTRETAT By Claude Monet istent. As soon as their eyes were opened to this fact of nature they saw that their own shadows were as false as those painted by the ready-made tones of bitumen and black of the past. Possibly they tried the experiment of holding up a really dark ob¬ ject and seeing that what looked by con¬ trast with brilliant light almost black was really a faint purplish tone. Then they discovered that the landscape in the dis¬ tance reflected the color of the sky and the clouds above it, sometimes so completely that the local color was practically ab¬ sorbed. When the sky was blue, and the clouds light and scattered, a cloud shadow often looked bright blue; if the clouds were numerous and purple, the same piece of country would assume their purple hue, solely from the influence of the light re¬ flected from above, while in the foreground the upper surface of every leaf and blade of grass was tinged with the color of the sky. They all seem to have grasped the col¬ ored shadow effects with avidity, for very soon we find Renoir giving a general violet tint to both people and things. As example of this there are two of his pictures at the Luxembourg, “l e Balancoire,” and “L e Moulin de la Galette,” or “Bal a Mont¬ martre /’ as it is often called. Sisley bathed his landscapes in rose or violet. Pissarro and Claude Monet painted effects of snow and hoar-frost, with blue shadows. They all tried their hand at painting snow for there they found playing BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 63 the simplest sky reverberations. They all but Manet, who waited until 1880, intro¬ duced blue and purple into their shadows, as light conditions necessitated, with al¬ most as much variety in color as in the illuminated parts, thus gaining in color, luminosity, vitality, and atmosphere. During five hundred years or more shadows had been painted without color, except by a few artists scattered through the centuries. There was Turner, who in¬ troduced into his drifting mists, blue and purple shadows many years earlier; Rey¬ nolds who painted some few rich shadows, and Mr. Moran speaks of seeing a few col¬ ored shadows in old pictures at the Metro¬ politan Museum. In one, of the fifteenth century, “The Deposition from the Cross,” by Antonello de Messina, he says there are purple shadows of buildings behind the fig¬ ures and blue shadows among the peaks of a snow-capped mountain in the distance. In Frans Hals’ portrait of his wife there are grayish-blue shadows in her wide, am¬ ple collar and her cuffs, and also in the collars of two portraits by Rembrandt. Mr. Moran tells of a not unusual experience he had in speaking to a roomful of people of the blue shadows in a Twachtman, as be¬ ing true to nature. The audience objected. He took them to the window to show them the blue shadows that were kindly at hand cast on the snow, thinking he would prove his assertion without any difficulty. No one of them had ever previously observed the color in shadows on snow. Some could not even see it then. There is no doubt that many of us are like Mr. Moran’s friends. We have never thought of shadows on snow or any other surface as being anything but neutral in color, or violet tinge. The truth is that the quantity of gray and purple in nature is surprising. Purple when rich and deep is a noble color and when paler it catches the eye strongly, but its use is dangerous to the painter unless it is subdued in line and faded with green or brown. If people of today have not become ac¬ customed to blue and purple shadows, im¬ agine how the public must have been an¬ noyed forty odd years ago, when they saw for the first time the purplish tint of many of the Impressionist pictures. When we speak of the public being annoyed, excited, etc., against any one artist, we must re¬ member that in those days the number of people at all interested was small, and for that very reason the interest was more in¬ tense. The Salon in those days was not the colossal thing it is today, with its thousands of exhibits, but a small affair. It was not until 1855 that they had much more space fiTUDE POUR “DON JUAN’' DESSIN By Felix Bracquemond -—Courtesy Musee des Beaux- Arts de la Ville de Paris. Petit-Palais 64 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS than a very large room and only two classes attended it, those who went because it was the thing to do, and a more limited number still, those who were really interested. It is only since 1863 that the Salons have been held every year. Up to that time, they were held every two years. As I was saying, the purple and blue shadows were a shock to the public. They had examples of them in the Louvre, but “having eyes, they saw not.” It was the same with colored shadows as with “clean¬ ing the palette,” and other things that will come up later. T h e Impressionists were not the first to see them, but they were the first to deduce from their discoveries cer¬ tain scientific statements that opened up the road to something new in painting. PETITE PLACE A ARGENTENTUIL By Alfred Sisley —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs PORTRAIT D'EVA GONZALES By Edouard Manet (PORTRAIT OF EVA GONZALES) — Courtesy Dublin Municipal Art Gallery, Dublin, Ireland FEMME NUE COUCHBE (WOMAN LYING DOWN) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir The Master Impressionists [Chapter III] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER ^ p HE School of the Batignolles,” I as they were jeeringly called, had accomplished much in its de¬ velopment, when the dread year of 1870 arrived to scatter the little group. They had to their credit the rejection of the ideal, of the “noble” subject; the suppres¬ sion of line; the suppression of fixed color; painting by the mass, which comprises sim¬ plified light and shades and led to the law of values; and color in shadow, notation of the tints in nature. Zola, writing thir¬ teen years later, at Manet’s death, gives Manet personally credit for a great deal. He says in part: “His influence is an accomplished fact, undeniable, and making itself more deeply felt with every fresh Salon. Look back for twenty years, recall those black Salons, in which even studies of the nude seemed as dark as if they had been covered with a mouldering dust. In huge frames his¬ tory and mythology were smothered in layers of bitumen. Never was there an excursion into the province of the real world, into life and into perfect light. 68 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS L’ENFANT AUX CERISES By Edouard Manet (CHILD WITH CHERRIES) —Collection M. Leclanche Scarcely here or there a tiny landscape, where a patch of blue sky ventured bash¬ fully to shine down. But little by little the Salons were seen to brighten and the Romans and Greeks of mahogany to van¬ ish, in company with the nymphs of por¬ celain ; whilst tbe stream of modern rep¬ resentations taken from ordinary life in¬ creased year by year, and flooded the walls, bathing them with vivid tones in the fullest sunlight. It was not merely a new period; it was a new painting bent upon reaching the perfect light, respecting the law of color values, setting every figure in full BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 69 LA FEMME AU TUB (WOMAN TAKING A BATH) By BAtw -Degf* E. M light and in its proper place, instead of adapting it in an ideal fashion according to es- tablished tradition.’’ Manet is commonly looked upon as the father of the movement, the guide and ad¬ viser of its pioneers, for it was he who first suggested la peinture claire, but it would seem as if Zola and the pub¬ lic were wrong in giving so much credit to Manet, and that the theories of the group could not be properly ascribed to any single master. Manet was in reality connected with this movement more by t h e accident of time and place than by his art. It seems as if the credit should be divided a bit. Of course Manet was the fighter ; his vigorous per¬ sonality and tenacity enabled him to make the breach in public opinion through which his friends passed. He was a born leader, all fi r e, tireless energy, dauntless courage, always going to extremes. He would not rest until he was not only not misunderstood, but understood, just as many of us in an argument are not satisfied with “You are right from your point of view,” but want our adversary to say, “I think exactly as you do.” Manet has been called the genius of the group, Claude Monet its best marksman. Manet was always on the lookout for trou¬ ble. He carried a chip on his shoulder throughout his life, and he usually found what he was looking for. He resented criticism, even coming from a friend. Duranty, an old friend, attacked him in the press, and Manet struck him across the face at their first encounter at the Cafe Guerbois. In the duel that followed, Zola and Vigniaux were seconds. Manet wounded Duranty in the chest; later there was a reconciliation. Most people preferred not to run up against him; that was Claude Monet’s feel¬ ings in the difficulty that arose through their similarity of names. In 1865 Claude Monet sent two seascapes to the Salon. Manet saw them and thought he had chosen the name to steal some of his thunder. He was up in arms at once, and asked, “Who is this Monet? He seems to have appro¬ priated my name to benefit by all the stir that is being made about me.” This remark was repeated to Claude Monet, who took good care ever after to sign his name in full. In speaking before his death of the bitter battles fought, Manet said to his friend, Antonin Proust: “This war to the knife THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 7 0 PORTRAIT DE MME. EMILE ZOLA By Edouard Manet (PORTRAIT OF MADAME EMILE ZOLA) —Collection Mme. Zola has done me much harm. I have suffered from it greatly, but it has whipped me up. I would not wish that any artist should be praised and beslavered at the outset, for that means the annihilation of his person¬ ality.” Then he added, with a smile, “The fools! They were forever telling me my work was unequal; that was the highest praise they could bestow. Yet, it was al¬ ways my ambition to rise—not to remain on a certain level, not to remake one day what I had made the day before, but to BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 7 1 PORTRAIT D’ANTONIN PROUST JEUNE By Edouard Manet (PORTRAIT OF ANTHONY PROUST, JR.) be inspired again and again by a new aspect of things, to strike frequently a fresh note. Ah! I’m before my time. A hundred years hence people will be happier, for their sight will be clearer than ours of today.” Men of such different tem¬ perament, character, environ¬ ment and training surely were influenced, one by the other, while guarding a distinct per¬ sonality of their own. There was Manet, the elegant, the Parisien, w h o, according t o one writer, was the most in¬ tellectual, to another the least intellectual of the group. One critic says he had no gift of psychology or idealism, a n d cites his Christ aux anges, at the Metropolitan Museum, as a proof. George Moore would seem to agree with this when he said: “His Christ watched over by angels in the Tomb is one of his finest works. His Christ is merely a rather fat model sitting with his back against a wall, and two women with wings on either side of him. There is no attempt to suggest a Divine death or to ex¬ press the Kingdom of Heaven on the an¬ gels’ faces. But the legs of the man are as fine a piece of painting as has ever been ac¬ complished. There is no symbolic intention. The angels on either side of his dead Christ necessitated merely the addition of two pairs of wings—a convention which troubled him no more than the convention of taking off his hat on entering a church. Manet’s eyes were closed to all but the visible world. He was content to live by the sight, and by the sight alone. When Manet thought, he did not think well, and as soon as he became absorbed in the matter rather than in the manner, he was unsuccessful.” Now another equally important critic comes to the front and says: “Manet set down with powerful strokes the weaknesses and the strength of men, as you may plainly see in the unflinchingly masterly portraits of Zola, Rochefort, Eva Gonzales, Duret, Desboutin, of Proust, Clemenceau and Guys and Faure, of Baudelaire and of Irish George Moore,” etc., etc. The portraits that are among our illus¬ trations will allow us to judge for ourselves as to psychology, for they are among his best. Pictures such as The Old Beggar and The Girl zinth the Parrot are really portraits, for Manet disliked to paint a model who posed for a Venus one day and a bar maid the next. He wanted his model to be the real thing. Fortunately, he did not care to paint a Venus, but he often did care to paint a bar maid. One BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 73 in particular was a coy maiden who would not sit for him unless properly chaperoned by her lover, so Manet put them both in the picture, the lover being served bock by the faithful bar maid, and called it Au Cafe. Another Au Cafe is a portrait of Eva Gonzales’ husband, M. Guerard, an en¬ graver, seated between two women in front of a table on which are some glasses and a match stand. One day Manet saw at the Palais de Justice a girl with strikingly white skin and reddish-blond hair, Victor- ine Meurend; he soon had her as a model, and she appears in several of his pictures, among them, Olympia, Le dejeuner, the Guitare Player. She is also the woman in blue in the Chemin de fer. Manet used friends and relatives alike for models. Mme. Guillemet is seen as La Parisienne, and In the Conservatory. He painted his wife in another conserva¬ tory picture, also in a garden scene. She and her brother, Leon Leenhoff, are in Reading and in View of an Interior, while in Fishing are both Eugene Manet and his wife. George Moore appears as a Bugler and Lathuille is the lover in Chez le pere Lathuille; the whole Manet family, includ¬ ing a cock and hen, are posed in another. There are but two portraits of Manet painted by himself, one partly in the sketch stage, where he stands, with his hands in the pockets of his yellowish jacket, the other, a half-length portrait, called Portrait with a Palette , less full face, the same yellowish jacket, but with a palette in his right hand. NATURE MORTE By Pierre-Auguste Renoir BAIGNEUSE ASSISE, DE FACE By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (BATHER SEATED) BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 7 5 Faure, a famous singer and for a time the owner of Le Bon Bock (which was a portrait of Belot), masqueraded under the title of Hamlet. Berthe Morisot appears several times in such pictures as le Repos, le Balcon, etc. He also used his pupil, Eva Gonzales, as a model. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, according to some writers, and Manet painted a daz¬ zling portrait of her. She is beautifully posed, all dressed in white, against a gray background and pale blue carpet. In a way we are forced to supply the intimate being of the wo¬ man ; there is little to help us. In nearly every face that Manet painted, he seized three or four points and the spaces between were left unaccount¬ ed for. He failed to join the plans and left out what he had not sufficiently observed. Some call it simplification, but it savors more of omission. He tried to compensate for this by his beautiful tone. In The Music Lesson he used Zacherie Austruc, the sculptor and poet, as a model for the music master. The Old Beggar was another portrait, this time of a typical rag¬ picker, and one might say that Manet showed some gift i n indealization, when he turned the filthy rags the man wore into beautiful colors by silvering the gray of the blouse and the blue of the trousers. The portrait of Mile. J. S., altogether a different type, shows a sweetness of charac¬ ter that suggests a psycholog¬ ical gift on the part of Manet. Standing against green leaves with a purple flower at the left and a red at the right, a young girl stands with an umbrella of gray, held in her suede-covered hand. The deep velvety hat strings and ancient lace, with a red rose nestled in its midst, frame the al¬ luring little face with its retrousse nose and bright eyes. The Boy with a Sword is full of subtlety, while Le Bon Bock and Hamlet, though strong and vigorous, lack it. So much for his gifts of psychology and idealism. Now as to his character. “Manet was as ingenuous as an infant. Woman was for him the most precious subject that LA PARISIENNE (THE PARISIAN) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Collection Henri Rouart THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 7 6 BAIGNEUSE DEBOUT, A MI-JAMBES, DE PROFILE A GAUCHE By Pierre Auguste Renoir (BATHER STANDING) BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 7 7 modernism had left. He painted her in this thought, as a flower. He painted all kinds of women, models like Victorine of the Olympia and of the Dejeuner, and Marguerite of the Woman in a Bath, and Woman with Garter. He painted Spanish dancers, artists, relatives, bar maids. He studied all classes, and his women appear chaste and sane. All the work of Manet is chaste, without affectation—never an equivocal hidden thought.” Now another has his say: “Manet’s art lacked just what his soul lacked, dignity, purity. He was extravagant in method and disposed toward low life.” It seems strange that we cannot even be sure about a man’s personal traits in the study of art. There is nothing that one can tabulate and check off unless it be physical characteristics, and even those seem to be varied, judging from por¬ traits of the same man by dif¬ ferent painters. But in regard to Manet, everyone agrees that he was a fighter, that he had, as George Moore ex¬ presses it, “that mysterious power which produces what artists know as ‘quality.’ ” Manet was often accused of painting to make people sit up and take notice, and they did. Angelina —belonging to the Luxembourg, and La Femme au Perroquet, belong¬ ing to the Metropolitan, are of this class. In the latter, the life-size woman in a pink peignoir is of the type pecu¬ liar to Manet. Duret says that the things Manet was accused of paint¬ ing to shock the public were simply and solely painted to suit his own taste, and with¬ out thought of the public. He seems to prove this in regard to the luminous patches of bright tones that Manet so frequently used to keep up his canvases with, and that often caused him to be accused of trying to be different from others. Duret tells the story which Mr. Flitch has cleverly translated, as follows: “In 1868, in the studio on the rue Guyot, Manet painted my portrait. Here I had an opportunity of observing the actual working of his mind, and the process by which he built up a picture. The portrait was of a small size and represented me standing up. The gray frock coat, which I was wearing, detached itself from a gray background, the picture thus forming a harmony in gray. When it was finished, quite successfully, in my opinion, I saw that Manet was not satisfied with it. He seemed anxious to add something to it. One day when I came in he made me AU CAFR-CONCERT (AT THE CAFE CONCERT) By Edgar Degas THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PORTRAIT (PORTRAIT) By Edgar Degas —Collection Camondo resume the pose, and, moving a stool near to me, began to paint it with its garnet- colored cover of wookn stuff. Then the idea occurred to him of taking a book and putting it underneath the stool. This, too, he painted, with its cover of bright green. Next he placed on the stool a lacquer tray, with a decanter, a glass and a knife. All these variously colored objects constituted an addition of still life in a corner of the picture. The effect was wholly unpre¬ meditated, and came to me as a surprise. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 79 Another addition which he made after¬ wards was still more unexpected—a lemon placed on the glass on the little tray. “I had watched him make these succes¬ sive additions with some astonishment. Then, asking myself what was the reason for them, I realized that I had before me a practical instance of his instinctive, and, as it were, organic way of seeing and feel¬ ing. Evidently the picture painted through¬ out in a gray monochrome gave him no pleasure. His eye felt the lack of pleasing colors, and, as he had omitted them in his first scheme of the picture, he introduced them afterwards by means of a piece of still life. Then this practice of placing bright tones in juxtaposition, which he was accused of having deliberately painted to make his work different, really proceeded from a perfectly frank and deeply rooted instinct.” Duret says that in examining Manet’s pictures after his own portrait was painted, he could readily see this same method of adding luminous passages by which he raised the key of the color scheme. In looking at the various bright colored ob¬ jects spread on the ground in Le dejeuner sur I’herbe, one can well believe this was his method; in the Olympia the different colored bright flowers in the bouquet and the black cat were undoubtedly for the same purpose. In the portrait of Lola de Valence, the theatrical accessories were added. In Nana the half of a man profiled at the right is introduced, like the cat in the Olympia, simply because of the note of black. REPETITION DE DANSE SUR LE SCENE By Edgar Degas (THE REHEARSAL) —Collection Camondo 80 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS DANSEUSE AU REPOS By Edgar Degas George Moore studied Manet's method of painting in the same way, and came to the same conclusion, that he had no method, that painting with him was a pure instinct. He says, “Never was an artist’s inner nature in more direct conformity with his work. There were no circumlocutions in Manet's nature; there were none in his art.” What Manet did in values, that is, intro¬ ducing brilliancy by the simplification of values, by intensifying the brilliancy by which all the lights grow lighter and the darks darker, Renoir did in color, and by doing this Renoir added or put in emotion. Renoir, through his color, represents one side of the Impressionist school, the emo¬ tional side, while Manet rep¬ resents the intellectual side, if there is such a side, and as to that, as I have already said, critics differ. Renoir was as opposed to theories as Manet, but had a greater desire to please. He was a dreamer, all nerves, all sensual; he felt the joy that there is in life just because it is life. His whole life has been a tender and gay love for life, and he expresses this love indefati- gably in the voluptuous lan¬ guage of color. He and Claude Monet were alike in making a real fete of nature, a fairyland of joyful and ca¬ ressing lights. One reason that he pleases is that he pos¬ sesses such richness and such fineness of nerves that he him¬ self cannot explain h o w he obtains the results that amuse him. His choice of subjects lies in the domain of grace, of joy, of all luminous things, of light, of the beauties of all nature, not a repertoire of ugliness and brutality. There are few anecdotes of Renoir. He had no wonderful adventures. He is a delightful talker, and still one could not quote from him. “A man of the world, and pursued by invitations, which he avoided, preferring to live a simple life,” says one of his friends. He has painted infinitely diverse work, with the most dif¬ ferent technique, but always with his own mark stamped upon it. His works, while (DANCER, AT REST) -Collection Henri Rouart BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER more or less unfinished and often resem¬ bling in their drawing the work of a very young artist, are still distinctive. They say Renoir has been one of the men dis¬ tinctly difficult to copy, and that no one has attempted it as yet. His works show an extreme versatility and marked uneven¬ ness. He has painted as lightly and as smoothly as Clouet, Holbein or Ingres, and he has painted with the palette knife. Les Baignenses is like enam¬ el. The Femme qui dort has great gobs of paint. He has painted a picture in a few hours and he has spent days without number on a picture no larger than the hand. Among Renoir’s pictures one runs across now and then, there will be one that is re¬ miniscent of someone else. His Diane chasseresse, paint¬ ed away back in 1866, shows Courbet’s influence, although even then there is a warm rose tint to the flesh and the face shows some of the character¬ istic traits of Renoir’s later women. In a few of his land¬ scapes one is reminded that he, like all the other Impres¬ sionists, was under Corot’s in¬ fluence for a time. In Champs Ely sees of 1867 he is so like Manet that at the first glance one would think the picture by Manet. Against these re¬ miniscences is a portrait of Sisley which shows pointel- lism fifteen years before the appearance of the Pointellists. Manet and Degas were more interested in reality than Renoir, whose liking for woman made him, in spite of himself, gather an idea of her personality and paint it. Re¬ noir’s woman is a woman im¬ agined by him, a creature very young, small, with rosy skin and a feeling of disturbed senses, more lymphatic than nervous, caress¬ ing and fearing, who has touches of perver¬ sity and something of innocence. This is not in accord with Impressionist ideas, for sometimes he reaches the intellectuality of the subject. This took him outside of the Impressionist teachings, for they cared nothing for the intellectual. They were DANSEUSE SORTANT DE SA LOGE (THE DANCER LEAVING HER DRESSING ROOM) By Edgar Degas —Collection Henri Rouart 82 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS ECOLE DE DANSE (THE DANCING SCHOOL) By Edgar Degas —Collection Camondo concerned exclusively with the technique of painting. They produced a result; they stated an exterior form, and for that rea¬ son it often happens that their pictures impress the eye only and leave the spirit unmoved. They stay studied because they are the synthesis of nothing, the idea of nothing. Renoir’s women are physically well de¬ veloped, firm, healthy, full blooded, well- fed, sensuous animals, not the over-exer¬ cised women of Degas, but of the luxu¬ riant, languorous class, women casting alluring and knowing glances from their long, ardent eyes. Manet’s women are just naturally unmoral, while Renoir’s are knowingly so. Renoir’s brush models them largely, but he is mostly interested in their brilliancy of skin and in the texture of the flesh; grace, symmetry, beauty of line were secondary considerations. His delicately fresh bathers stand all white in the full light. We see them through the pale blue, green and lilac of the air. To some they are superb as examples of womanly physique, while others find his round con¬ tours inflated, cotton-woolly. I feel this at times strongly. I never see his Femme nue couchee sur un canapee without think¬ ing that the woman’s legs and arms have been squeezed out, worm fashion, from a huge tube of cold cream. Another class of women that Renoir has painted were full of the archness of gra¬ cious womanhood, with beautiful mobile faces and supple gestures. He painted them as capricious creatures. The Petite Fille is one of these. She stands timid, eyes wide open, with color like the white powdered petal of a rose, her hands on her green belt, a ribbon at her throat and in her hair; the slender shoulders show through her linen dress, while the reflec¬ tions of the pale green background play upon its folds. Renoir's first out-of-door portrait, Lise BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 83 (1868), with its bright green foliage, be¬ longs to this class, as does the portrait of Samary (1879) who is posed in a dress of blue green against a background of bright rose; her blond hair, blue-black eyes and vermillion-fire at the lips and cheeks give an almost theatrical effect to this portrait. His portraits are often, like these few I have cited, decoratively placed in frames of foliage or in a bower of flowers with the infinity of the ocean in the distance. Renoir, like Degas, tried to fix the pass¬ ing movement, following the instantaneous¬ ness of the gesture as a sign of life, but he was unlike Degas in that his vision of things was a tender one and in that he did not care for the brutal surroundings of Degas. Degas’ view of life was narrower and on a lower level than either Manet’s or Renoir’s. In his nudes he seems to have gone to the extreme in his revolt against the idealized nudes of the past, although his admiration for Delacroix shines forth in some of his early pictures, such as the Study for Semiramis, and Jeune femme accoudee. Degas entered the circle at the Cafe Guerbois, and was influenced in his work by the discussions, but not in such a way as to arouse any particular feeling against him by the public. He exhibited at most of the Salons, and was not one of those to exhibit at the Salon des ref uses. He is not an Impressionist, never has been one, but because he exhibited with them and painted the kind of subjects they were supposed to paint, most people call him one, and he is always included in their retrospective exhi¬ bitions—perhaps to lend the beauty of his DANSEUSES A LA BARRE By Edgar Degas (DANCERS AT THE BAR) —Collection Henri Rouart 84 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS CHEZ LA MODISTE By Edgar Degas (AT THE MILLINER’S) —Collection Henri Rouart drawing to the cause. Degas seems to have looked around his world, and what struck him in modern life and most aroused his curiosity was the coarseness of the appe¬ tites. He did not look as many realists do, for the material misery that the people suffer, but rather for the moral and physio¬ logical misery. He took the victims where he found them, in the cafes, on the stage, in the green room, or on the street. The absence of synthesis is natural in his work, necessary even. It is an apparition of a moment, where there is but the synthesis of a moment, which gives to the work so conceived by Degas the mobility of life, and he obtains the expression by the plac¬ ing, side by side, a certain number of in¬ stants. The absence of the synthesis ap¬ pears more with Degas because of the absence of intellectuality in the people he represents. When Degas started painting the ballet girl, it was virgin soil. He was at liberty to teach the public to see ballet girls as he saw them, not as some other master had taught it to see them. The nearest approach to the subject that had been painted up to this time was when some painter had set nymphs in an Olympian harmony of motion or driven them whirling in a Bacchic frenzy in worship of their god. None of these past models fitted Degas’ vision of the ballet girl. He painted her as we see her under the great illusion of artificial BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 85 light, under the glamor of the footlights, where she appears almost beautiful in her short moment of triumph. The flutter and whirl of her tulle skirts, without aid of scenic arrangement, put back the clock of time, and we are again in the front row with our illusions still upon us. Then he turns the page and shows them' with none of the glamor of the footlights. He hides nothing of the sordid ugliness, of their poor hard-worked lives, of their meager, thwarted forms. There they stand, ridiculous, harsh-favored, pitiable, crack-voiced women, masquer¬ ading under the gay costume of the chorus. It is a bitter philosophy of life, this analy¬ sis he makes of these women who earn their bread by their legs, and is in keeping with his character, if the common report is true that he is a re¬ tiring, silent, solitary man, pessimistic, quick and bitingly witty, bitterly ironical, a lone¬ ly man with few friendships. Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cas¬ satt, Forain are numbered among these. He has con¬ tempt for critics and newspa¬ per men, who to this day are afraid to approach him, feeble and almost blind as he is said to be. He says that man only buys pictures because he thinks they will increase in value. He is sensitive to im¬ pressions and to wounds. Just at this time almost ev¬ eryone who keeps at all posted in current art news is particu¬ larly interested in Degas. This interest has been aroused by the fact that in the recent Rouart Sale at Paris a picture by Degas, The Dancers at the Bar, brought the highest price ever paid for a picture while the artist was still living. Degas, thirty years ago, sold it for $100, while the new owner will pay about $100,000, when commissions, etc., are added to the price bid at the sale, $87,000. When one reads of such a tremendous increase in price over what the artist himself received, it makes one feel very friendly toward a movement on foot in France to secure the passing of a law that would pay two per centum to any living artist on any sum re¬ ceived at public sale for one of his pictures, or to his heirs for fifty years after his death. PORTRAIT DE MME. X. (Pastel) (PORTRAIT OF MADAME X.) By Edgar Degas — Collection Henri Rouart 86 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA PASSERELLE D'ARGENTEUIL (FOOT-BRIDGE AT ARGENTEUIL) By Alfred Sisley —Collection Moreau—Courtesy Musee des Arts Decoratifs LE PRINTEMPS By Alfred Sisley (SPRING) BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 87 Because of the special interest in the pictures of this sale, I will run the risk of side-tracking our Cafe Guerbois men for a few minutes, while we talk about Degas and his pictures. Degas is a recluse, locked in his studio from early morning till late at night, not even admitting his most inti¬ mate friends. George Moore says that, coming across him one morning, he said, “My dear friend, I haven’t seen you for years; when may I come ?” The answer was: “You’re an old friend, and if you’ll make an appointment, I’ll see you, but I may as well tell you that for the last two years no one has been in my studio.” Moore did not make the appointment, and as he says, “It was just as well, as I later learned that another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the steep spiral staircase.” This was during the time Degas was going through the ner¬ vous strain that the creation of his entirely new and original art entailed. It wrecked his temper for the time being, and Moore says that the story of these terrible years of striving is written on every canvas signed by Degas. To imagine Degas drink¬ ing or carousing, or skipping from cafe to cafe, dashing off little impressions, is so far from the truth that it is laughable. The Dancers at the Bar is a typical work of his ballet girl class. It shows two girls in the regulation ballet skirts, fleshings and pumps. They are practicing the fatiguing pose of holding the leg raised by the aid LOUVECIENNES, TEMPS DE NEIGE By Alfred Sisley (SNOW AT LOUVECIENNES) THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS (THE WOOD SAWYERS) —Courtesy Musee cles Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais LES SCIEURS DE LONG By Alfred Sisley of a bar which runs along the wall of the room. The composition in this little two- by-two picture is simple to the extreme, a wall, a floor, two figures, and in a corner a sprinkling pot. It is an example of Degas’ beautiful drawing. He never fum¬ bles ; his figures are admirably placed in the scene and on their feet. His feeling for living ryhthm is great, his sight was extraordinarily acute. The picture is deli¬ cate, fine as a pearl. The movements are surprised and fixed with suppleness and firmness. One of the anecdotes going the rounds is that if this picture were shown to Raphael he would admire it; he would take off his hat to it; but if he were shown a Cabanel, he would say, with a sigh, “That is my fault.” Another story is that the ballet girls themselves are saying, “Ma foi! a little picture which only shows tzvo of us, for 500,000 francs; if he wished he could have had the whole corps de ballet for half that money!” The pastel Chez la modiste is another example of modern life happenings. Two women are seated in a milliner’s shop, one in a blue blouse, trying on a hat, the other advising, a scene repeated in every city where there is a milliner. There is one thing about Degas’ pictures, in them we have the feeling that the figures are always in perfect harmony with their surroundings, and with the subtle sensation of moral atmosphere which they provoke. There is no feeling that Degas has used a professional model. There is a searching realism. The illusion of the artificial light of the footlights is conveyed almost per¬ fectly. In these wonderful pictures of dancers, arrayed sometimes all in white, BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 89 sometimes in all the colors of the rainbow, he has placed before us real women who laugh and weep, who give their skirts the little jerk one connects with ballet-skirts, who put the smile on as the music starts and take it off when the music stops. Degas catches the thing on the wing. He has a taste for the accidental gesture that is sig¬ nificant, a professional gesture in that it suggests a habit. He sees the rhythm of a gesture and fixes a phase of the movement from which one reconstructs the beginning and the end. He does this at times by trun¬ cated composition. We often find in the foreground of one of his pictures frag¬ ments of figures and objects, half a ballet- girl for example, the hind-quarters of a dog sliced off from the rest of its body. This was not carelessness on Degas’ part; he always had a reason for the strange¬ ness of his composition when there was a strangeness; he meant to concentrate the attention on some curious study of move¬ ment or pose. For instance, when he paint¬ ed the lower part of the stage with the de¬ scending curtain cutting off the dancers to their knees, and showing only the heads of the musicians in the orchestra, he meant to show the different movements and vari¬ ous forms of the legs and feet of a troupe of dancers. Truncated composition is one of the things that the followers of the Im¬ pressionists have abused. Degas undoubt¬ edly based some of his pictures with violent perspective upon Japanese ideas, for the art of the Japanese had its effect upon them all, on Degas particularly. It reached them through Bracquemond, who some years be¬ fore had burst into enthusiasm over Ho- kuasai, and Burty who called the attention of the Cafe Guerbois group to the study of Japanese painting and color-printing. The love the Japanese painters had for nature broadened the western view and opened its LES JOUERS DE CARTES By Paul Cezanne (THE CARD PLAYERS) —Collection Pellerin 90 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS THE WILLOW By Claude Monet (THE WILLOW) —Copyright Carnegie Institute; Courtesy Carnegie Institute eyes to many things in nature that the west¬ ern artist had not seen. Manet and Degas took suggestions particularly from Hokua- sai, Outamaro, Kiyonaya and Hiroshige. A book has been recently written by Henry P. Bowie, of San Francisco, on “The Laws of Japanese Painting,” that is most interesting. What he has written was probably seen and discussed by the Cafe Guerbois group for themselves in their studies of the Japanese. Mr. Bowie says: “What is most extraordinary to the Western critic is the absolute objectivity of Japanese art. The individual element is rigorously suppressed. Every feature and detail of nature, every particular leaf, blos¬ som, tree, insect, and animal, has its own inward personality expressed in the char¬ acteristic inflections of its outward form. This personality it is the aim of the artist to seize, but in order to do so it is not enough to copy the object literally. Those particular traits must be divined in which the essential personality consists. Nor must these be copied in their appearance merely, but the very sentiment and feeling which inspire them must be felt by the artist and transmitted in the strokes of his brush. In this connection we hear of a very remarkable law in Japanese painting which defines the nature of the brush stroke and which is known as fade no chikara. It formulates as follows: When representing an object suggesting strength, such, for instance, as a rocky cliff, the beak or talons of a bird, the tiger’s claws, or the limbs and branches of a tree, the mo¬ ment the brush is applied the sentiment of BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER strength must be invoked and felt through¬ out the artist’s system and imparted through his arm and hand to the brush, and so transmitted into the object painted, and this nervous current must be continu¬ ous and of equal intensity while the work proceeds. As a consequence of this opera¬ tion it is suggested that if the tree’s limbs or branches in a painting by a Kano artist be examined it will astonish anyone to per¬ ceive the vital force that has been infused into them. Ewen the smallest twigs appear filled with the power of growth—all the result of fude no chikara. To attain pro¬ ficiency in this power the severe exercise is practiced of holding the brush perpendicu¬ larly to the paper and tracing lines horizon¬ tally from left to right and right to left, and vertically both downward and upward, each line with equal thickness and unwav¬ ering intensity of power throughout its en¬ tire length. One can quite well believe that the W-estern artists in Japan who have as¬ sayed their skill in a performance demand¬ ing such extraordinary sleight of hand have 9 1 quite failed to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their Japanese friends. “But can the reader imagine to what re¬ finements of interpretation an art thus cul¬ tivated may pretend? If not, the following anecdote may enlighten him: It is related of a certain great Chinese artist that a stu¬ dent having applied to him for instruction, he painted an orchid and gave it to him to copy. The student copied it with the ut¬ most care, but the master objected that the most essential feature of the original had been entirely overlooked. Again and again, the pupil reproduced the drawing with ex¬ actitude, and again and again was told for his pains that he had ignored the only thing that mattered. Finally the master ex¬ plained. The leaves of the orchid, though drooping to the earth, have really a secret wish to lift themselves upward to the sun. When, therefore, the tip of the long, slen¬ der leaf is reached, the artist, conscious of the desire of the plant, must express that desire in the quality of his brush stroke. This he himself had done, but by an inflec- LE QUAI DE WESTMINSTER By Claude Monet (THE WHARVES OF WESTMINSTER) 92 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA MAI SON BLEUE; HOLLANDE (THE BLUE HOUSE IN HOLLAND) By Claude Monet tion so subtle that the copyist had totally overlooked it. Nevertheless in that invisi¬ ble inflection lay the merit of the whole performance. It is not surprising- to learn, under these circumstances, what indeed was already a matter of common knowledge, that the art of painting in Japan is distinguished by the tendency of its professors to specialize within very narrow limits. Not only are Japanese artists classed according to the nature of the subject they have made their own, as painters of figures, of animals, of flowers, of birds, and so on, but we hear of the great monkey painter, the great fish painter, the great tiger painter, and others distinguished by a like concentration of genius. This inevitably follows from the argument which places the significance of every object strictly within the object it¬ self. Everything considered thus becomes a problem in itself, and over each of these separate problems a lifetime may be spent without ever achieving the final answer. Our way of looking at Nature is quite dif¬ ferent. All aspects of Nature are suscepti¬ ble in our eyes of innumerable methods of interpretation and suggestion, since they lend themselves, like musical notes, to the manipulation of the emotions of the arist. There is no exactly right way with us of rendering a rock, a mountain-top, a break¬ ing wave, a fir-tree, a bamboo branch, or a bunch of cherry-blossoms. The ways are infinite. You may blot them in with liquid color, or define them in exact form, or in short, adopt any method you choose, pro¬ vided you can suggest to the beholder some aspect of the scene that shall translate to him the emotion it arouses in yourself. We will not attempt to decide on the respective merits of the two points of view, for the BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 93 two methods are distinct and each must be judged on its own standard. At the same time, certain limitations there are, in¬ herent in the Japanese style, of a kind that can scarcely be ignored. The visitor to any Japanese exhibition of paintings, will, after a close study, soon perceive that no Jap¬ anese artist attempts a broad and general rendering of the scene which lies before him. Rather each artist is provided before¬ hand with a number of ready-made re¬ ceipts for all kinds of natural objects, and when these objects come into view down goes the receipt in a twinkling. Mr. Bowie devotes some space to explaining the nature of the ideographs of the Japanese language, and the years of study devoted by Jap¬ anese children to their mastery. He points out the prime importance of this study to artistic training, and we learn that, in ac¬ cordance with his master’s advice, lie him¬ self was obliged to fit himself for the art of painting by years of instruction in the brush-writing of ideographs. It is easy to understand the importance attached to the process, for the whole subsequent career of the artist is but an amplification of it. He is always working in ideographs, of which an incredibly vast number constitute his stock-in-trade. His art is a kind of short¬ hand. Kubota, Mr. Bowie tells us, could paint the landscape from a moving train as he saw it pass, or the scenery described in a poem as it was recited. “His brush skipped about with the velocity of a drag¬ onfly.” What he was really doing was tak¬ ing down in shorthand all that he saw or heard. The sign for each object in turn flew from his brush as quickly as it was mentioned because he had those signs by heart. Mr. Bowie objects to this mode of painting being called “trick” painting. Such signs or “art secrets,” known as hiji or himitsu, are acquired with infinite toil and application. There is no doubt that they are, as a rule, extremely ingenious and clever, so that the artist making use of them has the air of dealing in a kind of magic; but also it is obvious that to deal thus in what really are little more than L’IN ON DAT ION By Claude Monet (THE INUNDATION) LES ENVIRONS D’ARGENTEUIL (OUTSKIRTS OF ARGENTEUIL) By Claude Monet BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER formulas must tend to substitute a retentive memory and a quick touch for the deeper qualities of original thought and feeling. To the eye the first immediate qualities by which a Japanese painting is distinguished are the sharp little cocksure methods of representation, and the absence from it of any kind of emotional warmth. Such limi¬ tations belong to the Japanese view of na¬ ture as a collection of objects, -each offering itself as a conundrum to the artist, each asking him to define its ideograph. Natural¬ ly the tersest, cleverest signs soon obtain currency, but as soon as they do so they cease also to convey human emotion, and acquire the superficiality and hardness which are so very apt to characterize Jap¬ anese pictures. We have wandered far from our Cafe Guerbois, almost as far as their discussions 9 5 took them. What I started to say was that they were influenced by such Japanese art as they were able to see. It is said that a Japanese, Hayashi by name, who made a business of selling Japanese work of art, became acquainted with Degas, Guillaumin. Claude Monet, Pissaro, Mary Cassatt, Raffaelli, Sisley and Renoir, and took works from them in exchange for some of his prints. Later Claude Monet saw a number of colorprints in Holland by Hiroshige and their influence has stayed with him through life. Not that he follows the Japanese, but they suggested some idea to him and he followed it, such as the idea, for example, of painting the same subject on a series of canvases, varying the subject by painting it at different hours of the day. Manet and Degas may have based some of the pictures they painted in violent per- LA BERGE DE LAVACOURT By Claude Monet (THE BANK OF THE LAVACOURT) 96 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS spective upon Japanese ideas. The Japan¬ ese often allow the artist to look up from beneath, or down from above. Manet’s pic¬ ture painted from the top of the Trocadero, was one of the latter and many of Degas’ looking up to the stage over the heads of the musicians are examples of the former. Japanese enthusiasts find many affiliations between the Impressionists and the Japan¬ ese. They give credit to the Japanese for the surprise of detail introduced here and there in a perfectly arbitrary fashion, for the taste for fantastic decoration; for the large spots of color, for the dispersed com¬ position that is strong in Degas and means that instead of following the usual laws of composition such as placing his impor¬ tant figure or figures in the most important part of his canvas, he throws them to one side or the other, or almost covers them with an object, a bouquet of flowers, for example, and leaves the center of the pic¬ ture empty. Even in his portraits the sub¬ ject is often put at one side as if he or she were not really having their picture painted any more than the table with its glasses. Degas and Manet were not the only ones of the group to seize upon suggestions from the outside, and from each other, in their meetings at the Cafe Guerbois. Strong men like Claude Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne and Sisley, who assisted at the commencement, must have had con¬ siderable influence on each other while working side by side. Under the influence of certain dominating ideas each must have brought something to add to the whole and it seems, as I have said, unjust to give Manet the credit for all their development up to the year of the war (1870). It is true Manet had, more than any other, freed himself from conventionalities, but whether all reaction against conventional¬ ity is a good thing or not is a question. In the beginning it is, but it is fated to become conventional in its turn, as the Impression¬ ists themselves have proved. RAVINE OF THE CREUSE (RAVINE OF THE CREU8E) By Claude Monet —Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts LES PARAPLUIES By Pierre Auguste Renoir (THE UMBRELLAS) MADAM CHARPENTIER AND HER CHILDREN —Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art By Pierre-Auguste Renoir The Master Impressionists [Chapter IV] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER I N 1867 Manet used a sentence in the catalogue of an exhibition that he held of his works, that became fa¬ mous as an expression of the principles of the men, who met regularly at the Cafe Guerbois from 1862 to 1870. It was: “The artist does not say today: ‘Come and see faultless worksbut ‘Come and see sincere works.’ ” This really was the way they felt. They were sincere in their efforts to break from the conventional in painting. They forgot that all art must work in some convention, for perfect imitation of nature is impossible. Even when they threw aside the imaginary world and tried to reproduce pure phenomena in their copies of nature, made on the spot, they failed, for the result was still an imitation with the splendors of the natural colors of day and sunlight left out. They made experiment after experi¬ ment, not getting the lights any more posi- 100 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA TASSE DE THE By Pierre Auguste Renoir (THE CUP OF TEA) . ■- wi BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 1 0 1 LA FEMME A LA ROSE By Pierre Auguste Renoir -Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin, Ireland (WOMAN WITH THE ROSE) 102 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS JOUEUSE DE GUITARE By Pierre Auguste Renoir (THE GUITAR PLAYER> BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 103 MURE ET ENFANT By Pierre Auguste Renoir (MOTHER AND CHILD) 1 0 4 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS NATURE MORTE (STILL LIFE) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir tively than did the men of the past, with their falsified shadows; they had raised the key but the sky was too high for their palette to reach. The dazzling sunlight was deadened by the mixture of tones on their palette. They had reached the stage in their re¬ searches where they felt their masters were false in their treatment of light, but were themselves unable to paint bright, glo¬ rious, luminous sunlight. They had not dis¬ covered the secret they were after, but they were so far along the way that they were very quick to appropriate and carry to its legitimate conclusion a hint they soon had given them by one of Turner's pictures. The war of 1870 scattered the little group. Manet, who lived in Paris, became an officer in the National Guard and was appointed Captain to Meissonier’s stafif. He saw a good deal of fighting with the Prus¬ sians and of his own people later in the Commune. Zola went to Bordeaux. Renoir was moblot. Pissarro and Daubigny went to London, where Claude Monet fol¬ lowed them after first visiting Amsterdam. The story goes that Claude Monet worked in the parks and nearly starved, as did Pissarro; that he sent a picture to the Royal Academy which was refused; that Daubigny became interested in him to such an extent that he told Durand-Ruel that if he would buy some of Claude Monet’s pic¬ tures, he, Daubigny, would pay for them BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 105 with his own work. Durand-Ruel agreed to see the young man, whereupon Claude Monet appeared with six or seven canvases under his arm. Durand-Ruel took two or three and Claude Monet introduced him to Pissarro hoping to pass the “good thing" along. All these days he and Pissarro were haunting the London galleries, where they fell under the spell of Turner. A picture of snow by Turner particularly struck them. He had employed flecks of pure bright paint, side by side, to create masses of tone, and in doing this intense luminosity and vi¬ brancy of color was created. They copied him; they looked for other examples of paint used in this way and found them in some of Constable, Watts and Cox's pic¬ tures, who to suggest sunlight, fresh air and movement, had invented a formula of their own, symbolizing the vibration of light and the movement of clouds, grass and trees, a formula of broken touches in place of the broad level washes beloved by their predecessors. Claude Monet and Pissarro saw at once that the vibration of these scattered touch¬ es of pigment was in some degree analo¬ gous to the vibration of the luminous waves of light and air that they and their com¬ rades of the Cafe Guerbois had stayed up nights to find a way of capturing and put¬ ting on canvas. These lines or daubs of nearly pure color, separated by white, were a confirmation of the optical discoveries of Helmholtz and Chevreul. Probably Claude Monet and Pissarro had been interested in these dis¬ coveries of decomposition of color and science of complementaries, and had studied the optical problems that they suggested, with the rest of the world. Science had told them that a ray of sunlight passing tnrough a prism was broken or decomposed into three pure colors, yellow, red and blue, and at their edges these colors by mingling created violet, green, orange and indigo, a sort of blue violet. These form the seven colors of the rainbow or prism. All other colors that are called by different names are combinations of these seven. White is not a color; it is the light made up of all the colors of the prism. Nor does black exist; it is the absence of light. Up to this time their habit had been to mix their colors on their palette. They took for example a daub of yellow and a daub of blue, and by mixing it had a shade of green to put on the canvas. Turner took the same two colors, yellow and blue, and placed them side by side on the canvas and the green was made in the retina of the spectator’s eye if he stood off and focused the painting as a whole. This was on the principle that color in a decomposed form would recompose into pure light again when placed on the canvas in proper juxta¬ position. The optical mingling excited more SKETCH OF BERTHE MORISOT AND HER DAUGHTER (PASTEL) By Pierre Auguste Renoir —Courtesy Musee des Beaux-Aris de la Ville de Paris; Petit Palais 106 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA DANSE A LA CAMPAC.NE (THE DANCE IN THE COUNTRY) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir intense luminosity and the result was far more brilliant than that of any old masterpiece. This is what they mean when they speak of the broken color or of the decomposition of tone of the Impressionists. Each of the primary colors has a special af¬ finity for the color that the other two make if m i x e d. For example, red is particularly fond of, in other words, is a complement of green, which is made up of the other two primary col¬ ors, blue and yellow. Blue is complement of orange (red and yellow) and yellow is a comple¬ ment of violet (blue and red) and vice versa. This division of the tone, to get the greatest light, constituted t h e greatest innovation o f the Impressionists. For of course Claude Monet and Pissarro were not long in spreading the propaganda of their dis¬ covery, upon their re¬ turn to Paris after the war. Claude Monet par¬ ticularly preached the doctrine, the “New Gos¬ pel of Broken Colors." Renoir was one of the first to see the advan¬ tage that one could draw from the decomposition of light. Sisley was an¬ other disciple. M a n e t never wrought his art by color spots. Just how BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 107 greatly he was influ¬ enced by Claude Monet is difficult to say, for it is never easy to know who has given and who has received. It was about this time, how¬ ever, that his flowing brush-w ork became freer and more broken. His later works, though vibrant with light, have not the limpid harmony that is to be found in the works of the last survivors of the group. Meantime they were working direct from na¬ ture and applying the broken color theories to their work, making discoveries each day that opened their eyes to something new. They started by not mixing colors in mass. At the beginning they did not dare to free themselves from all ancient meth¬ ods, but they grew more and more free, their col¬ ors more and more sim¬ ple. They did not mix them but tried all other changes. They put them side by side; they super¬ posed them, to make them play through the holes that those on top left. They often kept the charm and freshness of the sketch, at the ex¬ pense of solidity. The three primary colors, yellow, red and blue, with the second¬ ary colors violet, green and orange, with white LA DANSE A LA VILLE (THE DANCE IN THE CITY) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 109 placed between each to keep the colors apart, composed their palette. They discard¬ ed all blacks and browns. They had no ex¬ act rnles; those they left for their follow¬ ers. Turner displayed consummate skill in blending his darks with the ground. The Impressionists avoided the difficulty by having no darks at all, and for this very reason their works lack the variety and force of Turner's glowing canvases. The omission of black from their palette is per¬ haps responsible for the lack of grave and serious feeling, for black suggests these, which characterizes their work as a whole, any may explain in part why most Impres¬ sionist landscapes look their best in a pho¬ tographic reproduction. But the Impres¬ sionists were not trying to express grave and serious things and they wisely kept to what they could express. What they wished to express with their broken color was the reverberation of color, the glint of leafage, the glitter of rocks, and one finds a canvas now and then which when given a rapid glance radiates, throws its light on the face of the spectator, but unless one averts one's attention promptly the illusion passes and the picture falls apart into a mass of exceedingly bright and daring spots. There is also a certain unity due not only to the talent of the artists, but to the fact that all the individual tones are built up of interlaced patches of the primary colors. Repetition of these colors is necessarily car¬ ried through the whole picture. For ex- THE FUNERAL —Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art Ly fidouard. Manet 1 1 0 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS IMPRESSION. SOLEIL LEVANT (IMPRESSION. THE RISING SUN) By Claude Monet. —Exhibited at Exposition du Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, in 181.) ample, if a fire illumines the scene the colors carried through the whole picture should be orange and red; if the light comes from the sky, blue would mingle with everything. The seven hues of the prism do not act sep¬ arately in nature; they blend. A nearby tree is green; seen further away through the luminous atoms of the air, reflecting the blue sky above, it appears bluish. Take for example a table spread with its white cloth. Science teaches us that white does not exist by itself, but is a fusion of the entire spectrum. The Impressionists paint¬ ed the white tablecloth with all the colors of the rainbow, leaving it to our eyes to re¬ compose them again into white. This is the secret of Broken-Color, the explanation of which most people skip when they run across it. These theories of tech¬ nique of Impressionism, others had had pre¬ sentiments of. They show in certain fres¬ coes of Andrea del Sarto, in Mending, in the Byzantine mosaics in their earliest stages. Among the moderns, they are found almost complete in Watteau. In the Embarkation for Cythera, Watteau perfect¬ ly grasped the division of color tones as the Impressionists understood it. Turner has often had this in mind in his pictures where the shadows are colored. In Constable's Opening of Waterloo Bridge there is almost this exact method of using pure white. Delacroix has an exam¬ ple of the theory in the nude woman kneel¬ ing in the foreground of the celebrated Crusaders Entering Constantinople. At a near view one sees that the parts of the back in shadow are modeled by a succes¬ sion of strokes of blue, which, being- the complementary color of yellow, with which BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RG M EY E R 1 1 1 the lighter parts are painted, admirably ex¬ presses the warm color tones of the flesh in shadow. It took our little group of men, once more united by the processes of expression, several years to work out what you have read' in a few minutes, and they were hard years. When peace came, the Cafe Gner- bois remained closed. This naturally stopped the frequent meetings and discus¬ sions. Those that took place after this were at Manet’s new studio, 4 Rue de Saint- Petersbourg. Manet, essentially a Parisian, attached to the Boulevards, stayed in Paris to paint figures and subjects in his studio, not going out except on special occasions. Pissarro, Claude Monet and Sisley settled in the country definitely; Pissarro at Pont- oise, Claude Monet at Argenteuil, Sisley at Voisins, and soon after Cezanne went to live at Auvers. Cezanne had a little money ; the small fortune Manet had inherited from his father was gone; but he, only, of the small group had a considerable vogue. He was decent enough to try and use this for the benefit of his comrades, displaying their works in his studio; practically none were sold. The men grew desperate and talked of ways and means to attract the public. The question was, should they con¬ tinue to knock at the doors of the Salon as individuals and be refused, as Renoir had been in 1872 and 1873, or should they no longer submit their pictures but expose to¬ gether outside of official circles. Their common search by direct notation and transcription for the truths of nature, their close analysis of light and its color elements, created between them the bond of a distinctive school. They were beginning to be known a little to the art public and wished to reach a greater number by sys¬ tematic exhibition of their pictures. If each one went his own way it would end in fail¬ ure for most of them in all probability; if they could force themselves en masse upon the public it might count for more than any one of them could accomplish alone. EFFET DE PRINTEMPS By Claude Monet (EFFECT OF SPRING) 1 1 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES FALAISES D'ETRETAT, 188.2 (THE CLIFFS AT ETRETAT) By Claude Monet They felt if their pictures were seen often enough to accustom the public to their strangeness, sooner or later the truths they expressed would be recognized, but just how to accomplish this without influence or money! Those who had never been admitted to the Salon had less to lose than the few who had been admitted. Manet had succeed¬ ed in getting back after the Salon dcs Re¬ fuses by his exceptional fighting ability. Berthe Morisot was the only one of them to expose during the war. Claude Monet and Sisley had met with no special opposition. Pissarro had exposed for years as he was more or less a follower of Courbet and Corot until he developed his light manner. Renoir exposed his Lise in 1868 and al¬ though it was painted out-of-doors, he was still dependent upon Courbet as to tech¬ nique. Even when they were accepted at the Salon they were not sure of being fairly seen, for it often happened that the pic¬ tures were accepted in a way that was worse than being refused. Fantin-Latour had been hung in the third row. Many a good picture was hung so high that only an instinct could make one discover it. They were sure if they followed their meth¬ od and developed as a group, they would be refused at the Salons, with a possible ex¬ ception now and then, so they renounced the Salons and decided to expose together. It is said that to this decision, that recog¬ nized the value of an organized body of workers animated by similar aims, is due the immense influence that the band of Im¬ pressionists had on the moulding of modern artistic thought. Manet did not feel like giving up what he had gained, so did not join them in their BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 1 1 3 revolt, but gave his influence and encour¬ agement to their cause. He had chosen the official ground on which to fight his own battles; their battles were to be fought else¬ where. Up to this time the public was indifferent, except towards Manet. He had been sig¬ nalled out by the Empress Eugenie, who de¬ manded that his works should be removed from public display. His work was the laughing stock not only of the French pub¬ lic but the students of the day regarded it as having been done in the spirit of fun, and it was spoken of either jokingly or ridiculed as absurd. Some of Manet's admirers say that he played a joke on the public when he painted Le Bon Bock, that he painted it to show his enemies that he, too, could tickle the public fancy and draw the praise of the critics. If that was his idea he succeeded, for Le Bon Bock was one of the most popular works at the Salon of 1873. In giving his own impression, he reflected the impres¬ sion of any observant man. It is a bit of French life, although, by the way, beer is more associated with German life than with French, but it is not the drink labeled “Bon Bock,” but the good nature of this broad, flat-faced Frenchman, the suggestion of the friendly greeting he would give were one to enter and sit down at a nearby table, that confirms our impression of reality. Manet had painted other pictures that should have pleased the public if it wanted simple things. The Music Lesson, for ex¬ ample, was simply a picture of two people sitting side by side, one, a man, ostensibly LA ROUTE DE GIVERNY By Claude Monet fTHE ROAD AT GIVERNY) 1 1 4 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES DfiCHARGEURS DE CHARBON (WHARFMEN UNLOADING COAL) By Claude Monet giving a singing lesson to a young lady. The green of the couch, the black dress of the woman, the light touch of a flower formed a warm harmony, but innocuous as this was, it failed to have the success of Le Bon Bock. Many years after, it was chosen f o r an exhibition of Cent Chefs d'oenvre held in Paris, and hung next to a portrait by Hals. At that time a compari¬ son was made of the two pictures that in¬ terested me immensely. Here it is—I ought to know who wrote it, but have forgotten: “Manet himself would not d e m and a greater honor—his Bon Bock has been hung next to a portrait by Hals. Without seeing it, I know that the Hals is nobler, grander; I know, supposing the Hals to be a good one, that its flight is that of an eagle as compared with the flight of a hawk. 1 his is exaggerated, as are all comparisons. Hals never placed anyone more clearly in his favorite hour of the day, looked for¬ ward to perhaps since the beginning of the afternoon. We read the age, the rank, the habits, the limitations, physical and mental, of the man who sits so stolidly, his fat hand clasping his glass of foaming beer. Now after fifteen years I can see that round, flat face, a little swollen with beer, the small eyes, the spare beard and mustache. His feet are not in the picture, but I know how much he pays for his boots and how they fit him. Nowhere in Hals will you find finer handling or a more direct, luminous or BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 1 1 5 simple expression of what the eye saw. It has all these qualities, and yet it falls short of Hals. It has not the breadth and scope of the great Dutchman. There is a sense of effort; in Hals one never feels it. It is more bound together; it does not flow with the mighty luminous ease of the Chef- d'oeuvre at Haarlem.” It was through Le Bon Bock that the friendship between Manet and Alfred Stevens was broken. I think Mauclair tells the story: Stevens disparaged Le Bon Bock in intimating its source of inspiration to have been created in Holland. He said “He’s drinking Haarlem-brewed Beer,” a quip that took everywhere. Manet soon squared accounts, however. In one of Stevens’ interiors there was a young woman about to pass through a curtained door to another room. At her feet some careless servant had left a feather duster. Manet, glancing at the duster, said, “Evidently she has a rendezvous with the valet de chambre.” In direct contrast of spirit to Le Bon Bock, but painted in the same period, is The Funeral, now at the Metropolitan. The picture, although unfinished, conveys a vivid impression of sad leave-taking. It is a scene of austere and reticent beauty, chilling and uninviting; gleams of dull light alternate with dark sombre clouds. As a study of sky in its relation to the earth it is interesting; as a study of the unprepar¬ edness of man to take his departure to an¬ other world it is expressive. A grenadier of the Imperial Guard mingles with the group of sombre mourners who follow the hearse to the last resting place of their dead. They look as lonely and sad as the LA RBPfiTITION DE DANSE By Edgar Degas (REHEARSAL OF THE DANCE) —Collection Henri Rouart 1 1 6 THE MASTER I M P R E SSI ON I S T S CHEVAUX DE COURSES (RACE HORSES) hy Edgar Degas —Collection Camondo SUR LA PLAGE By Edgar Degas (ON THE BEACH) —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts. Dublin. Ireland BY CHARLES LOUIS B0RGMEYER 1 1 7 nearby frowning hills and the leafless trees which stand out as sentinels in this scene of inhospitable aspect. Irresistible is here the feeling of death and its conception. This feeling, which dominates the work, is ac¬ centuated by the domes of several churches and the Pantheon which show on the brow of the hill. In Le Bon Bock, Manet had, as was his custom, used one of his friends as a model. This time it was the engraver Belot. In Bal Masque, or Bal de 1 ’Opera Manet used a number of his friends as models—Duret, Charbrier, the Composer, Albert ITecht, a collector, Guillaumin and Andre, both young painters. This was a peculiar pic¬ ture painted in an almost uniform tone of black, a few women in fancy dress giving the only note of color. It is said that Manet’s first and last his¬ torical picture, The Execution of Maximil¬ ian, is one of the few pictures he painted not from life, and then he did the best he could. He had a squadron of soldiers to represent the firing party and two friends to pose for Generals Mejia and Miramon, using a photograph of Maximilian. 7 h e Escape is another scene that he did not wit¬ ness. The scene represented is that of Rochefort and h i s companions effecting their escape from New Caledonia, whither they had been transported after the Com¬ mune. After Manet painted Le Bon Bock in 1873 the public thought he had sown his wild oats and now was ready to come into the fold. How mistaken they were he showed them the next year when he ex¬ hibited Le chemin de fer. This was a pic¬ ture painted out of doors of two small fig¬ ures, doing nothing in particular, with a railway and the steam of an engine sug¬ gested in the background. It was not un¬ derstood or liked. Then the next year he went one further and exhibited his Argen- teuil. This time the figures were life size, his brother-in-law, Rudolph Leemhoff, be¬ ing one. Another was a woman. They were seated in full sunlight side by side in a boat with the water as a background, and the steep bank of the river as the line of the horizon. The brilliancy of the tones was more than the public could stand quiet¬ ly and there was almost as much of a hub¬ bub over this as over his Dejeuner and Olympia. He saw the water a marvelous deep blue in a fierce sunlight; he painted it as dazzling as he could and although it was not dazzling enough to suit him, it was more than enough for the public. The vio¬ let shadows took the place of the conven¬ tional brown; the brush work was loose and broken-up. The jury felt so hostile LA FAMILLE MANTE (THE MANTE FAMILY) By Edgar Degas -—Collection Montgomery-Sears, Boston 1 1 8 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS FEMME DANS UN JARDIN By H. de Toulouse-Lautrec (WOMAN IN A GARDEN) —Collection Henri Rouart to him that his offerings of the next year, L'Artiste and Le Huge, were rejected. There was nothing in L’Artiste to arouse this an¬ tagonism, but they felt it was time to call a halt. It was a portrait of the engraver Desboutins. Manet did not take this rebuff in a kindly spirit, but sent out invitations to those interested, and asked them to come and judge for themselves if he had been badly treated. The press thought he had, and said so. This made his next offering acceptable to the Salon, but after further consideration one of them was withdrawn as being too risque. This was Nana, after Zola's novel. As Duret says, “When this Nana is compared with the numberless pic¬ tures of Joseph and Potiphar, Susannah and the Elders, Nymphs and Satyrs, from the hands of great masters, its perfect air of reserve is at once obvious.” These were some of the pictures Manet had thrown on the battle field and one can hardly blame him for wishing to keep the ground he had won, and refusing to join the others in their exhibitions and commence the battles all over again. In 1874 we find our men of the Cafe Guerbois banded together ready to give an ex¬ hibition of their work. They invited a few artists, sculp¬ tors and engravers, all more or less known, who had some points in common with them, to join them, so as to attract the public and press. Boudin and Lepine are often spoken of as belonging to the Impres¬ sionist school, but they joined in but this one exhibition, withdrawing in fear from the name Impressionist, as it did not express their views and they wished to remain dis¬ tinct from those with whom they differed. There was no place in a central location large enough for the exhibition, so they rented from a photog¬ rapher (Nadar) a suite at 35 Boulevard des Capucines. They charged a franc en¬ trance, hoping to pay rent with what they received. They called themselves Societc anonyme, des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs. The first exhibitors were Astruc, At- t e n d u, Beliard, Bracquemond, Brandon, Bureau, Cals, Cezanne, Gustave Colin, De¬ gas, Guillaumin, La Touche, Levert, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, de Nittis, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouart, Robert, Sisley, Albert Le- bourg, Auguste Boulard and a few others, thirty in all. No one knew what to call them. Duranty spoke of their work as “The New Painting,” but that did not catch the fancy of the public. It was not until Louis Leroy on the Charivari, on the BY CHARLES LOUIS B O RG M EY ER 1 1 9 25th of April, 1874, placed at the head of an article written on this exposition, Ex¬ position des Impressionists, that a popular name was found. This was meant as an insulting- reference to a sunrise that Claude Monet exhibited at this first exhibition called Impression; soleil levant, a really beautiful picture of a port with boats show¬ ing through the morning mists, their con¬ tours lost, all lighted by the red sun. This name, given to them accidentally and derisively, was a misnomer. The men themselves did not care for the dignity of having a name thrust upon them that so little expressed their intentions. They said Impressionist fitted every painter and had ever since the 15th Century, and they wanted a name all to themselves. They themselves tried “Independents,” “The School of 1870.” This last suggestion was silly because it was after 1870, near 1874, that their battles were fought. The matter was taken from their hands, however, for the public hung tenaciously to Impression¬ ists, and after several years of struggle they acquiesced and were thenceforth known as Impressionists. This historic exhibition in April of 1874, besides giving them a name, was an im¬ portant date for French art of the 19th century, but as an exhibition it was a fail¬ ure. There was only a small attendance, and that due to the better known artists who were frightened at the bad company they found themselves in, and took good care not to run the risk a second time. LE PONT DE MELUN ITHE BRIDGE AT MELUN) By Paul C6zanne —Collection Vollard BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 2 1 There was not enough of a noise made to advertise them even, just petty insults, such as the placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and jibes. They sold none; their friends had spent all they could afford and dealers were afraid to urge them upon their clients. Renoir exhibited five paintings in oil and one in pastel. Two of these, La danseuse and La loge, are among his best pictures. It seems astonishing to our present day eyes that they should have been received with jeers and laughter, but it was the same old story, the public could not understand his originality. The general violet tones in his shadows brought down upon him his full share of abuse, and he emphasized a certain mistiness that he had already shown premonition of in his Lise. You can see it quite markedly in the man's figure in La Logo, and in the Danseuse. In this last picture the flesh of the young dancer, standing, life-size, is firm amidst the fluffiness of the ballet-robe and the soft¬ ness of the brown hair. The bluish gauze melts into the background, suppressing all hard contours. The pink slippers give the only touch of color, although the picture seems full of color. This same Danseuse is now considered a masterpiece. What Claude Monet, Sisley, Guillaumin and Pissarro were doing with landscape, Renoir did with figures. He adopted their pure color and bright tonality and under his brush the face, the flesh, even the ac¬ cessories, took on exceptional radiance. The next year, 1875, they had no exhibi¬ tion. but held a sale at Hotel Drouot to get VILLAGE ON THE SHORE OF THE MARNE By Alfred Sisley —Courtesy Carnegie Institute (Copyright by Carnegie Institute) 12 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS TEMPS DE NEIGE 1873 By Alfred Sisley (THE TIME OF SNOW) money if possible. Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cezanne, Degas, Guillaumin, de Nittis and Pissarro were represented. There were some sev¬ enty pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of the community. They only received laugh¬ able prices. Even the attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid up the prices was not carried out suc¬ cessfully and many of the pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and withdrawn. 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 $28.00; La Source, $22 (afterwards sold for $14,- 000) ; Une vue du Pont neuf brought all of $60; Claude Monet's twenty pictures aver¬ aged from $40 to $60 each. All this time the public and the press were not intensely interested in them as a group. They went to the first exhibition in 1874, attracted by those who joined them and because it was easy to drop into. The sale that followed in 1875 was good fun for the public but was not crowded. Their second exhibition in 1876 was held in the galleries of Durand-Ruel, the year after the sale. The number of exhibitors was reduced from the thirty of the first exhibi¬ tion to nineteen. Caillebotte and Desboutin appeared with them for the first time; Cezanne and Guillaumin were missing. The second exhibition added to their notoriety but not to their wealth. A very, very few friends took up their battle and a little BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 123 warmth was added to the press criticisms. One of the most satisfactory efforts from an advertising point of view was written by Albert Wolff in the Figaro. He said in part: “The Rue Peletier is unfortunate. Fol¬ lowing upon the burning of the Opera House, a new disaster has fallen upon the quarter. There has just been opened at Durand-Ruel’s an exhibition of what is said to be painting. The innocent passer¬ by enters, and a cruel spectacle meets his terrified gaze. Here five or six lunatics, of whom one is a woman (Berthe Morisot) have chosen to exhibit their works. There are people who burst out into laughter in front of these objects. Personally I am saddened by them. These so-called artists style themselves Intranesigeants, Impres¬ sionists. They take paint, brushes and can¬ vases ; they throw a few colors on to the canvas at random, and then they sign the lot. In the same way the inmates of a madhouse pick up the stones on the road and believe they have found diamonds.” A number of years after Wolff wrote this scathing criticism he met Manet, went to his studio and sat for his portrait at Manet's request. Duret tells his experi¬ ence : “Manet posed him leaning backwards, al¬ most lying down, in a chair, then proceeded to follow his usual daring method of at¬ tack. He threw lumps of paint and splashes of color here and there over the canvas, intending to work each part over again, and so by successive additions bring it up to the degree of finish which he deemed de¬ sirable. After three or four sittings there were still parts that were only just indi- LE LOING ET LES COTEAUX DE SAINT-NICAISE By Alfred Sisley (THE RIVER LOING AND THE HILLS OF SAINT NICAISE) —Collection Mme. Sisley-Diets 1 24 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES SARCLEUSES (WOMEN PULLING WEEDS) By Camille Pissarro catecl and Wolff was confirmed by this fal¬ tering and slow method in his opinion, that Manet was a very incomplete artist, with little real knowledge of his trade, and inti¬ mated as much to Manet. The sittings were discontinued and the picture never finished, but what there is of it reveals the hand of a master.” Among these pictures that Albert Wolff referred to were eighteen bv Renoir, two that now hang in the Luxembourg, L a Balancoire and Le Bal a Montmartre. To this exhibition he also sent a portrait of Madam Charpentier, the wife of a publisher who was one of the few friends of the Im¬ pressionists. This portrait-head of Madam Charpentier led to his painting a brilliantly successful and important canvas of Madam Charpentier and her two little daughters. Leonce Benedite says it is a classic chef d'oeuvre in portraiture. At the time it was painted friends considered Charpentier foolish to place so large a commission in the hands of Renoir. He paid all of $60.00 for it. This portrait was, in truth, an in¬ fluence in Renoir's life, for from this pic¬ ture dates his many successes in portrait painting and his freedom from the poverty that had nearly crushed him out of exist¬ ence. It represents Madam Charpentier dressed in black (Renoir did not discard black, altogether, as did some of the Im¬ pressionists) seated on a sofa with her two young daughters at her side, one of them with her hand on a large dog lying on the floor. The whole picture is brimming with light, the black dress of the mother with its white lace, the flounces of her skirt BY CHARLES LOUIS BO ROMEYER 125 THE GREAT BRIDGE AT ROUEN By Camille Pissarro showing from beneath, the blue of the children's dresses, the yellow and violet of the carpet, the black and white of the dog—all form a bold range of tones, but always in harmony. The fruits and flowers on the little table in the background give a hint of the beauty of his still-life. Here, as in so many of his paintings, Renoir has been content with an easy-flowing rhythm, with beautiful color, rather than an interpretation of the human mind. We must not look to him, or in fact, to the Impressionists, for the saving clause of a thought, a sentiment, or a passion. Madam Charpentier has rather the charm of a pen¬ sive flower. Renoir's greatest weakness was the insufficiency of psychology in the faces and a certain weakness of style, show¬ ing that the sense of color, although admir¬ able, does not supply all wants. Time does a great deal to Renoir’s work. The patina that certain of his pictures have taken is sometimes surprising. Some of PRINTEMPS, VUE DE LOUVECIENNES By Camille Pissarro (SPRING, SCENE AT LOUVECIENNES) 126 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS JEUNE FEMME TENANT UN ENFANT DANS SES BRAS (PASTEL) By Mary Cassatt —Collection Henri Rouart them have been absolutely transformed dur¬ ing the past twenty years. The rapidity of the execution, the unequal thickness of the paint and the granulated surfaces of many Impressionist pictures cannot help but work towards their injury. It is said that it is impossible to varnish such paint¬ ings without changing them in all their harmony of tones; the grays and dull tints deepen under the varnish, and the general harmony is thus destroyed. If this is true and if it is also true, as many contend, that it is because of the varnish that many old masters are magnificently preserved, the Impressionists will continue to suffer, but this time at the hands of Time himself. In many of their pictures there is even now an accumulation of dust and dirt in the crevices of the paint, and in this portrait of Madam Charpentier and her two daughters now at the Metropolitan, there is a no¬ ticeable cracking of the paint. The next year (1876) the Impressionists pluckily tried another exhibition. There were but nineteen exhibitors this time—Claude Monet. Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Sis¬ ley, Renoir and Caillebotte (who showed his Raboteurs de parquet ) with some re¬ cruits. This exhibition arous¬ ed the public's attention. The indifference felt toward the first exhibition in 1874 was not long in turning to violent hostilities. No one gave the men the praise they really deserved for following their convictions to the bitter end. but heaped reproaches upon them and went laughingly or angrily to see the horrors of Pissarro's low, vulgar sub¬ jects, the opposite of all art; kitchen gardens, fields of cabbage, women guarding cows, necessary evils but outside of the pale when talking of Art with a big A. The next year, 1877, was the most im¬ portant exhibition that the Impressionists ever held. It seemed to be the culminating point of the abuse by the public, which, by the way, they had done all they could to deserve. No other one of their exhibitions ever made the same sensation. Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir and Guillaumin went full length in the peculiarities of Impres¬ sionism. This going to the extreme at this time was most natural. The criticisms of the public and press and the encourage¬ ment one had given the other during the past three years had developed and ac- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 127 cented their individual peculiarities. The outsiders had all withdrawn, leaving only eighteen, these being true Impressionists, to show by themselves. There were Pis¬ sarro, Claude Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Berthe Morisot, Guillaumin, Caillebotte and a few others. This third exhibition was another finan¬ cial failure, and they followed it by an¬ other sale. They tried the same boosting trick that they played in the first sale in 1875, but with a little better success, as for the forty-five pictures by Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley and Caillebotte, they received about $1,500. Sixteen of Renoir’s pictures brought about $400 and the purchasers ought to have waited a little longer, for the next year there was a slump in the mar¬ ket and Renoir sold le Pont de Chatou for $8, Jeune fille dans an jardin for $6, and la Femme an Chat for $16, a grand total of $30 for the three pictures! This time the crowd was there, but it came to laugh, to jeer. They took the pic¬ tures in their hands, turned them upside- down, sideways, pretending to admire them equally well in any position, as they could not distinguish the earth, sky or water one from the other. After 1877 they held an exhibition nearly every year from 1879 t° 1886, each year becoming better known and the public more familiar with the strangeness of their works. They were urged on at this date by both literature and the theatre. Zola’s successes, I’Assomoir and Nana , w e r e a very active influence in artistic circles. It was said that Degas drew his washerwomen FEMME LISANT DANS LA CAMPAGNE (WOMAN IN THE COUNTRY, READING) By Armand Guillaumin —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin, Ireland 128 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES DEUX SOEURS By Berthe Morisot from 1 ’Assomoir and Renoir his popular scenes of public houses and dances. By this time their friends had bought as many pictures of them as they could afford and they were dependent upon the public, and the public was either furious with them or found them excruciatingly funny. Those who were entirely dependent upon their brushes suffered terribly. After the auction sales of 1875 and 1877 they passed through direst difficulties. Sisley accepted with his usual good humor five or six dollars for his pictures, and was glad to get them. It is said that Cezanne, who had a small allow¬ ance, and Pissarro, never went below eight dollars. Guillaumin was lucky, for later on he won a lottery ticket of $20,000 and that ended his pecuniary embarrassment. It was fortunate for them all that Guillau¬ min knew a restaurant keeper who had artistic and literary aspirations, and who, at any rate, had a big heart. He let them eat until they owed for a certain number of meals and then he took a picture in pay¬ ment. (THE TWO SISTERS) Some of the stories told of the help they gave each other seem almost absurd when one thinks of the prices demanded for their pictures today. Certainly those who be¬ lieved in them and backed their belief by good money (or meals) have reaped a re¬ ward not at all commensurate with the amount expended. If one wished to make a commercial affair of buying pictures the moral for the amateur whose purse is lim¬ ited would be to buy modern pictures, just because they have not stood the test of time and there is yet no market for them. It is well known that nothing so increases the appreciation of an artist’s works as his death. The story is told that Teniers caused the rumor of his own death to be circulated so that he might be benefited by it, rather than others. Some few collectors have given up old masters altogether and will no longer look at anything but modern work. Doucet, the famous couturier who recently sold his collection of eighteenth century works of art for about a million dollars, is today numbered among those who are buying only modern works of art. LA DEBACLE DES GLACES, 1881 (BREAKING UP OF THE ICE) By Claude Monet The Master Impressionists [Chapter V] By CHARLES LOUIS BORCMEYER I T was not until 1886 or 1887 that the critics began to change their tone in re¬ gard to the Impressionists. There was still opposition, and there still is opposition, but the definite victory cannot be doubted if one concedes that their teachings con¬ sisted more in tendencies and efforts than in actual achievements. The saying is that they have led many artists to think more about sunlight and less about finish. The change that Zola speaks of as having taken place between the Paris Salon of 1883 and of twenty years before, has continued and the Salon of today as compared with the Salon of thirty years ago is like a bright May morning compared with a dark No¬ vember day. It is just here that the Impressionists have scored. Contemporary painters have not disdained to profit by all that was use¬ ful in their teachings, which would seem to show that in art the extravagant is instruc¬ tive, while the timid is not. Ordinarily if you go beyond the formalities of your sur¬ roundings, you lose cast, while it would seem that in art you gain rather than lose, if you succeed in making a strong point. Their achievements seem an unimportant change in the methods of painting, but in reality they created an entire change in the method of seeing things. They gave the love of open air, the love of the truth and beauty of nature, freed from conventionali¬ ties, and they opened up new qualities of atmosphere, but always they are beginnings, not completed doctrines, where nothing can be added. 130 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS SNOW EFFECT, VfiTHEUIL, 1S81 —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin , Ireland By Claude Monet Naturally Claude Monet took a leading part from the first in the exhibitions that the Impressionists held. His picture, Im¬ pression: soleil levant, gave to the Impres¬ sionists their name. It was he who painted out-of-door scenes most daringly of all. If the word Impressionist is used in the way it is now generally used, that is, to express “the rapid noting of illusive ap¬ pearance,” then Claude Monet is its su¬ preme exponent. He was and is still one of the greatest lovers of light that ever lived. He has painted out-of-doors since his boyhood, when he haunted the wharves of Havre and Honfleur with Boudin and Jongkind, and he painted in the sunlight of Africa while doing his military service. So he was ripe for the plein air movement and became its extremist advocate. So constant was his practice of painting out of doors that Manet painted him in an open boat on the river and laughingly called it Claude Monet in his Studio. There are some won¬ derfully beautiful things of his painted at Argenteuil of this time. Le Pont d’Argen- teuil is one of the most reposeful pictures of modern art. Soon after this came a period rich in works where his passionate desire to paint light swept all before it, and from then on he “specialized” on light, regulating all solids to the second plane in his dialogue between the sky, the earth and the trees, the elements that compose the universe. He takes some one thing from nature and makes it a pretext on which to paint his studies of light. The interest in his work is not in the composition of the landscape itself, but in his efforts to paint light. Claude Monet shared the years of dis- BY CHARLES LOUIS BO RG M EY ER 1 3 1 tress and misery that the Impressionists went through. It was only with the great¬ est difficulty that he was able to sell enough pictures at $20 apiece to keep himself from absolute want. In order to show the con¬ tempt that was felt for his works, Duret tells of an experience he had. It seems that in 1873 Daubigny paid $100 for Claude Monet’s Canal a Saardam, not to Monet, however. This was before the slump in prices caused by the exhibitions of 1874, 1876 and 1877. At Daubigny’s death, in 1878, a sale took place and Duret says: “The Canal a Saardam appeared to me to be one of the finest things that Claude Mo¬ net had done, and I determined to bid for it. The sale was held but there was no trace of the picture. I supposed that Daubigny’s heirs, appreciating its worth, did not wish to part with it. Happening to visit the Hotel Drouot a fortnight later, I came across a roomful of unfinished sketches, old canvases, some of them barely rubbed with color, others covered with dirt, together with a pile of easels, palettes, brushes, ly¬ ing on the floor and there all by itself was the Canal a Saardam. I made inquiries, and found that I had stumbled across the scourings of Daubigny’s studio, which were to be sold anonymously as things of which the ownership might better be con¬ cealed as Daubigny's heirs thought they would disgrace the official sale of his ef¬ fects. I bought it for $16. After several changes of hands, the last owner, M. Decap, withdrew it from a sale when it reached about $6,000, not being satisfied to let it go at that price!” AT ANTIBES By Claude Monet 132 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS WATERLOO BRIDGE, LONDON, 1900 —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin, Ireland By Claude Monet Many of Claude Monet's best known pic¬ tures were painted after the Impressionist Exhibitions ceased. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has hanging in its galleries a wonderful series of his pictures dating from as early as 1875 to his Pond Lily series of a few years ago. There are many, many Claude Monets in America, and the feeling is that he can do no wrong—a slight change from the feeling of 1874. Claude Monet is still living, still painting. Later we will see illustrations of some of his more recent works. He, like Degas, re¬ fused the Legion of Honor, but will enter the Louvre before his time with the Ca- mondo Collection. In looking at Pissarro’s pictures, such as Pontoise, The Tuilleries Gardens, and La Carrousel, they seem almost academic in their drawing when compared with the methods of the Impressionists. Pissarro was slow to take the new ideas. He was forty years of age before he fully entered Impressionism, and then he too decomposed his tone in order to reinforce it, and ad¬ vanced day by day in light and brightness, but he stayed on the safe side, never going to extravagant lengths. He had a tendency to see blue everywhere. This blue of his is special to him. You see it in the petti¬ coats of the peasants, in the blouses of his laborers. It is intensified in the shadows, and whitens under the sun, but is kept in accord with the green meadows by the va¬ porous sun-dust. We have a number of Pissarro’s pictures in our museum and pri¬ vate collections. I remember two at Boston. One of Poplars and the other of peasants in the field, both quite typical of Pissarro. Pissarro’s peasants have a certain homely charm as he pictures them in their charac¬ teristic attitudes. Some of his pictures at this time showed a brilliant range of color that sug¬ gest Cezanne’s influence. To the peopie he suggested the none-too-popular Millet. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 33 but to the seeing ones there was no similar¬ ity except in his choice of subjects. Pissarro lived until 1903. The first years of misery were followed by comparative ease, but he never changed his habits. Pis¬ sarro was struck by many germs during his life, those of Pointillism and Divisionism being among them. Later he said his Poin¬ tillist pictures were a failure. When Pis¬ sarro was sixty-six years old he had some trouble with his eyes that dust increased, but this did not stop him from being a plein airist. Pie sat at his window and painted everything he could see, then went to Rouen, Paris, Plavre and Dieppe. Many think that these pictures are the best he ever painted, especially those at Rouen. The truth is, Pissarro was rather over¬ shadowed by his early companions, who spoke with a greater force. At seventy, Pissarro was described as “a splendid old man, with snowy beard, deeply furrowed features, beetling eyebrows and jet black eyes, full of depth and power.” Pissarro’s sons are following- in his foot¬ steps, one is an engraver, another has made a name for himself under the nom de brosse Manzana, a third, Lucien, is talked about a good deal today in both Paris and London as a neo-impressionniste. If Pissarro hurt the public by his ordi¬ nary subjects, Cezanne nearly killed it with the shocks that his intensity of color and originality of design gave. Cezanne had passed from Delacroix’s influence (his L’Enlevement is of that period) to that of Courbet, which lasted longer than Dela¬ croix’s, then from Courbet to Manet. It was the color scheme in each that attracted him, and it was as a colorist that he became of capital importance. Although he sub¬ mitted to different influences, the influences were always much modified by his own strong personality. It was not until he was over thirty years old that he was persuaded by his friends, Pissarro and Vignon, who lived in neighboring villages, to go out of doors with them and paint. Up to that WATERLOO BRIDGE WITH BOATS CARRYING FREIGHT, 19)3 By Claude Monet 134 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS SELF PORTRAIT —Collection Pellerin By Paul C6zanne time, 1873, he had always painted in his studio; even his La neige fondante was painted indoors. Directly after starting to paint from nature he developed an abso¬ lutely personal scheme of color, one of vio¬ lence, but harmonious even in its violence. It was perhaps he who among the impres¬ sionists was most criticised. He was so badly treated, so misunderstood, that he gave up in despair after exhibiting a few times with them, and withdrew from all public exhibitions, with one exception. In 1882 he sent a portrait to the Salon, and for the first and only time was accepted, prob¬ ably through his friendship with Guillaudin, who was on the jury. Cezanne painted what he saw, no abstract sentiments, no emotions. A painter by in¬ stinct, untrained, faulty as a draftsman. In a great measure it is due to his peculiar drawing that the reproach of carelessness in one of the first essentials of art was called down upon the whole group. Neverthe¬ less, Cezanne was honest, and his very honesty sometimes makes a greater impression upon us than the finer gifts of many other men. The quality of the painting in itself, in which Cezanne's superiority lies, is beyond most of us to see. The fea¬ tures that we do see appear to be little less than mon¬ strous. His best work is to be found in his still-life, ex¬ act studies of nature, exact sometimes to excess. Often his cups do not stand in their saucers, and his bottles are tipsy; his fruit and dishes are sliding from the table, and suggest the beginning of an earthquake. His attempts have been earnestly m a d e, and we feel that they should be met in the same spirit. At the same time it must be owned that we f e e i like agreeing with P'uvis de Chavannes when he tells his pupil to “First of all place your scene so that it does not dance, that is the first demand of the eye; after that you can embellish,” etc. Duret, in speaking of Cezanne, says, “The distinctive and isolated nature of Cezanne’s art was due, first of all, to the circumstance that he had never received a regular course of training in any of the ateliers of the famous painters of the day. Hence his style appeared unusual. Cezanne, by his unique and very pronounced style, gave a violent shock to the public taste. He was before all things a painterq his drawing had none of the rigidity of lines and contours which was to be found in the BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER works of other artists. His method was peculiar to himself; he applied touches to the canvas first side by side, then one upon the other. In certain cases it may even be said that he plastered his pictures. For those who had eyes to see, the different planes, the contours, the modeling, disen¬ gaged themselves from the juxtaposition and superposition of touches of color, but for others they remained confused in a uni¬ form mixture of color. To those who only understand drawing under the form of an arrangement of fixed and precise lines, he did not draw at all. One quality his pictures have of very high merit; it is the value of the pigment in and for itself, the strength and harmony of the color. Now Cezanne’s pictures offer a range of color of great intensity and of ex¬ 1 3 5 treme luminosity. From this the picture derives a strength independent of the sub¬ ject, so much so that a still life of a few apples and a napkin on a table assumes a kind of grandeur, in the same degree that a human head or a landscape with sea would.” Cezanne stands forth as a big figure in modern art, judge his art as we may. We are compelled to pause before his grim and resolute interpretation from which all emo¬ tion is banished, and are forced to admit his unrelenting strength and directness, al¬ though it may not be altogether pleasant to us. He shows us the backbone and the skele¬ ton of a bit of nature, and while his version of nature is a powerful one, often a cruel, uncompromising statement of bald facts, it THE GARDEN OF THE LOUVRE By Camille Pissarro 1 36 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA MAISON DU BOUCHER A PONTOISE —Collection Jos. Hessel By Paul CCzanne is too austere to charm. There is no joy or gaiety in it. Cezanne’s offering to Impressionism was neutral color, and it was a great gift. He used the neutral color purple, as a compro¬ mise of red and blue. Some Cezanne fad¬ dists and there are Cezanne faddists for fair —say he is the founder of the whole school, but after all he represents but a section of the movement, and all fads are exaggera¬ tions of a section. By this I mean that the average man or faddist would try to make, for example, a thing appear forcibly under a green, an orange or a purple light, while a genius makes it take its place among the others as a whole, to make a unit. A genius is generally a complete article, while a fad¬ dist may be likened to the man who uses one finger instead of the whole hand. There is no denying that Cezanne’s inde¬ pendent effort exercised a very notable in¬ fluence on the Impressionist evolution. His simplification of colors, surprising in a painter who was so in love with reality and analysis as was Cezanne, his luminous shad¬ ows, delicately tinted, made a valuable addi¬ tion to the common fund. Cezanne was the last to be received by the public with favor, and then his public was made up of artists and connoisseurs who placed him in the front rank. In 1901, Maurice Denis exposed at the Salon a pic¬ ture called I’Hommage a Cezanne. This was painted, of course, with the same ob¬ ject as that of I’Hommage a Delacroix, nearly forty years before. One of Ce¬ zanne’s pictures was on the easel, and gath¬ ered admiringly around it are the painters Denis, Redon, Roussel, Serusier, Vuillard, BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 137 Bonnard, Mellerio and Vollard. These were Cezanne’s particular admirers. The general public still looks on wonder- ingly at his vogue. Cezanne had the hu¬ miliation of being ready to accept the Dec¬ oration of the Legion of Honor and not getting it, but he will have his revenge, for he will enter the Louvre with the Camondo Collection. In Cezanne’s estate at Aix was a little park that he went to every afternoon, rain or shine, during the last years of his life. For years he painted the landscape of low mountain and beautiful valley that he could see from this park. He called it his motif. A week before his death he was in the park, painting in the rain, when he had a sudden chill, and had to be carried home. Two days after he was back again, putting the finishing touches to a portrait of an old sailor. Again he was taken ill and carried home, this time to be put in bed, but the passion of painting was so strong in this seventy-year-old man that up he would jump and put a touch here and there on a water-color that he kept at the side of his bed. He literally died with a brush in his hand. In direct contrast to Cezanne’s tipsy bot¬ tles and saucers are Degas’ marvelously drawn figures. Degas by no means chose the easily done point of view. Moore says, in speaking of VAbsinthe: “The ingenuity with which Degas selects LANDSCAPE By Paul Cezanne 1 38 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS STILL-LIFE By Paul Cezanne his point of view is without parallel in the whole history of art. In his VAbsinthe is an excellent example. He has a man and a woman seated in a cafe furnished with marble tables. The first difficulty the artist had to overcome was the symmetry of the lines of the tables. Not only are they ugly but they cut the figures in two. The sim¬ plest way out of the difficulty would be to place one figure on one side of the table, the other on the other side, and balance the composition by a waiter seen in the distance. But that was too easy for Degas’ wonderful point of view. The man is high up on the right hand corner, the woman in the middle of the picture, the empty space on the left, so characteristic of Degas’ compositions, admirably balances the composition, and it is only relieved by the stone match-box and the newspaper thrown across the opening between the tables. The color, almost a monochrome, is very beautiful. More mar¬ velous work the world never saw, and will never see again.” And this Moore wrote when it would have been a joke to have asked $500 for a picture by Degas! Guillaumin took part in many of the Im¬ pressionist exhibitions. To the early ones he sent pictures of the quays and outskirts of Paris. He held a little position that kept him in Paris. These pictures of “vul¬ gar” neighborhoods found no admirers among the refined spectators; in fact, they disgusted them. He kept to near-at-home subjects until he was about fifty, when he BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 139 won a lottery ticket of $20,000, which al¬ lowed him to give up his position and travel a bit. He also painted figures and portraits out of doors. One, a pastel that was sold at the Hayashi sale in New York this winter, was a picture of a young girl with a homely, little, interesting face. Just the head and shoulders against a background of green. The curious out-of-door lights play upon her face and unkempt hair. He painted this in 1879, an d it is an exceedingly good example of what he sent to the Impression¬ ist exhibitions of that time. Guillaumin started with rather sober color, but day by day adopted a brighter and brighter scheme. From the first, he had a way of being influenced by the man he admired for the moment, but worked through the influence to a manner all his own, with a little of the other man clinging to him. For that reason one gets a feeling of Claude Monet occasionally in some of his landscapes. Again some of them are so full of force, so vibrant in color and high WOMAN WITH THE BEADS By Paul Cezanne —Collection M. E. Druet PORTRAIT OF MADAME CEZANNE By Paul Cezanne —Collection Vollard in key, so striking in the extreme, that the first glance gives one the sensation of standing before a Cezanne, but of far more varied color than Cezanne would have used. Guillaumin is over seventy now, but one still hears of him in art circles. Raffaelli took part in some of their later exhibitions. He made no special stir until 1875, when he did some illustrations in color for magazines. His subjects, like those of Guillaumin, are of the poor, the miserable social waifs of the suburban zones, set in a gray, anaemic landscape. The public never found him particularly distasteful. His pictures are facts, noted directly from life, with often curious light effects, and there is the instantaneous expression that Renoir and Degas sought. He really only belongs to the Impressionists through his drawing. He does not use the broken color, but vibrant touches in which black and white are used in conjunction with touches of direct color. As the years have passed, his subjects have grown happier; from un¬ happy people in unhappy surroundings he 1 40 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS TLTE D’ENFANT (PASTEL) By Armand Guillaumin (CHILD’S HEAD) —Collection of the late Tadamasa Hayashi of Tokyo, Japan BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 4 1 passed to the lower middle class types of Paris and England. From these he passed to Paris itself, its people, its streets, and to the picturesque villages in the neighborhood of Paris. His impressions of these are the sincere impressions of the average man. Sometimes there is even beauty, but it is not the work of a poet, or of a subtle imagina¬ tion. His vision is not that of a refined temperament, nor does it lift us from the world of realities into the realm of dreams. His types are easily understood by anyone. His pictures with their backgrounds of sub¬ urban landscapes with bare, hungry trees along the muddy roads, with their horizons of factory chimneys, are now very popular with the public. They never were abhor¬ rent to the public, as those of Manet, Ce¬ zanne and Pissarro. In many of his pic¬ tures one feels that his sense of values is negative, and that he, like Caidebotte, scorns perspectives. His pictures where he blazons the splen¬ dor, the fascination and allure of Paris’ great thoroughfares are well kno*wn to us in America, as several of our museums have them. Looking at the one hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art soon after having risked my immortal soul by crossing the street he pictures, I missed the excite¬ ment of the real place; my impression was of the noise of the carriages; busses, of the trees, the people, the horses, soldiers, workmen, little milliners, everyone on the move, but Raffaelli gives me none of this feeling. In this picture I hear no noises. LANDSCAPE By Armana Guillaumin 142 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS By J. F. Raffaelli I do not see friends strolling along gayly chatting. The figures are there, the car¬ riages, the omnibuses, the soldiers afoot, and on horseback, the gentleman with his cane, but I would never hesitate to plunge in their midst and cross that street; a baby could do it without fear of being run over. It is more a picture of a season than of the life of a busy Paris boulevard. The bare trees, the people dressed in heavy clothing, with hands in their pockets, the color, all suggest a cold, bleak winter afternoon. — Courtesy of Carnegie Institute ■Copyright by Carnegie Institute I do not mean to say that Raffaelli has not at times a very subtle vision of art. In a retrospective exhibition of his works held in Paris in the summer of 1909 there were several pictures that were dreams of poetry, far, far beyond the illustrations that so often pass for “fine” Raffaelli’s. The one we illustrate from the Brooklyn Museum is of this type. I noticed in this retrospective exhibition that all of the pictures of this particular type were owned and loaned by real art lovers, and were not for sale, while, BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 143 on the other hand, there were many offered of the type we are most familiar with in America. The one at the Carnegie Insti¬ tute is of still another type, and interesting. Raffaelli has “arrived.” He is not much more than sixty years old and a very busy and popular man. He received the Decora¬ tion of the Legion of Honor in 1889. Sisley, whose pictures seem like finest harmonies to our eyes today, and whose pic¬ tures at least seem inoffensive enough to pass unnoticed, came in for his full share of abuse when he exhibited his lilac-colored tones, rose-tinted lilac, when he wished to express sunlight. They called them arti¬ ficial hues. Sisley was obstinately searching for light. He had the feeling for light in the highest degree, and if he did not attain the power of Claude Monet, he at least knew how to give a sensation of extraordi¬ nary space and atmosphere. He saw the laughing mood of nature. He painted sim¬ ple scenes of rivers and their leafy banks, villages and country scenes, gay with spring flowers or shivering under snow. L’lnon- dation is now prized as a wonderful picture, and has been fought over by some of the greatest collectors, but in 1872 it went beg¬ ging. There are a number of fine Sisleys to be seen in America. Boston has The Spring Freshet at Moret, a good example. The STREET SCENE IN PARIS By J. F. Raffaelli —Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts 1 44 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BEYOND THE CITY WALLS, PARIS By J. F. Raffaelli —Courtesy Museum of The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Carnegie Institute has at least one that I know of, a beautiful one of a village on the shore of the Marne; both this picture and the one loaned to the Art Institute at Chi¬ cago are stronger and more positive than those of the Luxembourg. They both give real pleasure to the one who loves the tran¬ quil in nature. I think I prefer the one of the Carnegie Institute, although the other, with its typical Sisley tree throwing its dark shade upon the river conveys a feeling of immense space. A peculiarity I have noticed in the friends of Sisley; when they speak of him it is always with an adjective; it is the good, the great-hearted Sisley, the loyal Sisley, or the unjealous Sisley. Sisley was always poor, but he kept plodding right along, too busy to become bitter. His ambition after the disastrous sales of 1875 and 1877 was to sell his pic¬ tures at $20 each, only to sell enough of them to relieve his distress, but even that was be- y o n d the possibilities. He never swerved from the course he thought right in or¬ der to please. He did have one piece of luck; in 1874 M. Faure, a singer, took him to England. Sisley was born an Englishman, but was much more French than English in manners and tastes and ideas. The last twenty years of his life he lived in the little village of Moret, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. He made rapid notes in colored crayon of everything in Moret, the bridge, the mills, the houses, the people, with clear annota¬ tions, and then from these notes he painted the synthe¬ sis of what he had seen painting in an intense light. Sisley died of cancer in 1899, before gath¬ ering the fruit of his laborious and difficult life. Until the very last day he was poor. Three months after his death a sale of twenty-seven of his canvases brought about $23,000, and the town of Moret has put up a monument in his memory near the bridge he so often painted. The first monument erected to an Impressionist. Renoir experts put Renoir’s best period during the period of the Impressionist ex¬ hibitions, viz: the ten or fifteen years that passed after the war. It was during these years that he painted a number of pictures that we will illustrate later on, as belonging to the Luxembourg, and several that were shown last summer in Paris at a wonderful retrospective exhibition of Master Impres¬ sionists, that I was fortunate enough to see BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 145 and also fortunate enough to secure many photographs of the article I hope to write on that exhibition later on in this series. In 1873 l’Amazon, or, as it is some¬ times called, VAlice cavaliere au Bois de Boulogne, was refused at the Salon, pre¬ sumably because of the reflected lights and interplay of tones, although he had gone back a step in this picture towards the old influence of Courbet that he had rather forsaken after his Diane Chasseresse of seven years before. In La Loge the pecu¬ liar softness, the seeing the figure through atmosphere, that later developed to excess in Renoir’s work, is quite distinctly shown in the figure of the man in the back of the box. This man, by the way, was Renoir’s brother. The woman who plays the grande dame in her box at the theatre, ready to see and be seen, was Nini, a model. The brother appears again in Le dejeuner. In Le dejeuner des Canotiers (1881) the oars¬ men and their friends grouped around tables, under an awning, are Renoir's friends and models; the gentleman wear¬ ing the high hat was a patron; the young girl in the front playing with the dog afterwards became Renoir’s wife. The scene is laid at Chatou, in the little restau¬ rant on the bank of the Seine owned by old pere Fournaise. Renoir painted a portrait of him as the Man with a Pipe. When any painter uses a restaurant keeper for a model, and almost all of the Impressionists did this, it arouses a suspicion. Perhaps this very luncheon of the Canotiers was paid for in this way, who knows ? It is a hackneyed subject raised by the pictorial THE RIVER SEINE AT BOUGIVAL By Alfred Sisley BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RGMEYER 147 charm and richness of color. The reflections fall on the grass, glasses and dresses and on the naked arms of the men. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a Renoir painted at this same place. About this time Renoir began to have a little success. He had painted, one after the other, pictures that counted, such as Moulin de la Galette (1881) of the Luxembourg, the Famille Charpentier of the Metropolitan, several good Baigneuses (1885) and the Enfants Berard (1884). Moore seems to feel that Re¬ noir fell from grace about 1881, when he went to Ven¬ ice. He says: “Renoir, a painter of rare talent and originality, after twenty years of struggle with himself and pov¬ erty, succeeded in attaining a very dis¬ tinct and personal expression of his indi¬ viduality. His work was beginning- to at¬ tract buyers. For the first time in his life he had a little money in hand, and he thought he would like a holiday. Long read¬ ing of novels leads the reader to suppose THE SLUICE Ly Alfred Sislei STREET IN A VILLAGE By Alfred Sisley that he found his ruin in a period of riotous living. Not at all. He did what every wise friend would have advised him to do. He went to Venice to study Tintoretto. The magnificences of this master struck him through with the sense of his own insignifi¬ cance. He became aware of the fact that he could not draw like Tintoretto, and when he returned to Paris he resolved to subject himself to two years of hard study in an art school. For two years he labored in the life class, work¬ ing on an average from seven to ten hours a day, and in two years he had utterly destroyed every trace of the charming and delightful art which had taken him twenty years to build up.” That is the way Moore felt about Renoir’s art after the eighties, and this would include a number of pictures that other critics speak of as among his best. Take the L’apresmidi des en¬ fants d Wargemont (Les en¬ fants Berard), for exam¬ ple, painted in 1 8 8 4. The 1 48 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS little girl sitting on the sofa is called “the most ravishing little girl Renoir has ever painted.” Renoir had spent a good deal of time with the Berards and painted a number of pictures of the children, so that he knew them intimately, and for this rea¬ son probably the portraits are much more psychological than those in Madame Char- pentier et sa Piles, or the picture he painted four years later of the three children of his friend, Catulle Mendes. This last picture would make one think Moore had some rea¬ son for his opinion, for they are three por¬ traits, nothing more. He painted these same children several years after in three very similar pictures, all called An piano. Renoir’s later pictures are often too soft. In 1883 he had an exhibition all by himself of about seventy of his canvases. Among them were three particularly successful works. They represented different types of dancers, the Bougival waltzers were Cano- tiers in blue yachting suits and girls in out¬ door dresses; those of Paris were in con¬ ventional evening dress. The greatest per¬ sonal triumph he had was when in 1904 his works were included in an exhibition of painters who were dead or well advanced in their careers. The public and the press united in eulogies to his art. He had re¬ ceived the Decoration of the Legion of Honor four years before. Renoir is now a man of seventy, with fingers twisted by rheumatism. It is hard to think of him as anything but young, but Meier-Graefe, who has recently written a THE RIVER SEINE AT GRENELLE By Alfred Sisley BY CHARLES LOUIS BO RG M EY ER 149 YOUNG WOMAN READING By Pierre-Any ant Reno,r book about him, describes him as he saw him last year. He says: “Renoir was seated alone in a large room in the sun. It seemed as if he had been seated there for a long time, and that he often sat there motionless. His face re¬ sembled that of Titien’s Pope at Naples, it was as marked by age and as intelligent. He looked through the large win¬ dows towards the hills ; he did not turn when I entered and paid little attention to my re¬ spectful words. I would have given much to have been as old as he so as to have had a more natural way of ap¬ proaching him than by vain phrases on art.” Berthe Morisot took part in almost as many of the Im¬ pressionist exhibitions as did Pissarro, who held the medal for strict attendance. Manet told Moore that his sister-in-law would not have existed but for him, and that is the opinion of many, but she had the charm of exquisite feminine fancy that he did not give her, even if she did have one of the worst of feminine vir¬ tues, assimilation. She was rather saved by the critics; not that she was better un¬ derstood than the others, but she was a very charming woman, and women had not at that date been in active competition with men for any length of time. She appears in a number of Manet’s pic¬ tures that we have illustrated, and in a little very sketchy sketch by Renoir. She died in 1895. Mary Cassatt was not as closely identified with the Impressionists as Berthe Morisot. For one reason, she was much younger, but she is often classified as one of the Master Impressionists. I am very sorry not to have more illustrations of her pictures, but she did not reply to my letter, and reproduc¬ tions of her works are more difficult than usual to find, except of those that are still for sale. Had it not been for the courtesy of the Boston, Metropolitan and Detroit Mu¬ seums, who have interesting examples of her work, I should have been poor indeed in my illustrations. As it happens, in these few we can get a very good idea of Mary Cassatt. The Mother and Child, of both the Met¬ ropolitan and the Detroit Museums, are of the type that Mary Cassatt’s name is identi¬ fied with and are very good examples of this type. She delights in painting a chubby baby clasped all in a bunch in its mother’s arms, a real indiscriminate nursery gesture, 1 5 0 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA BOH&MIENNE By Pierre-August Renoir THE BOHEMIAN BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 5 1 A WOMAN, RESTING ON THE GRASS By Pierre-August Renoir or a young child in some intimate relation¬ ship with its mother, in her lap or close to her with arm around her neck. These little nude figures have the current of life play¬ ing through them. They are never particu¬ larly gay children, but there is a suppleness, a naturalness of pose that does away with the mawkish sentimentality that is so often shown in painting this subject. Mary Cas¬ satt, although American, seems to have no native quality in her work, in that she is altogether French. The Boston picture at the theatre, is the same subject that we have seen many an¬ other artist tackle. The effect of the lights on the people sitting in a box at the theatre seemed to have particular attraction for the Impressionists. It is interesting to compare this picture with Renoir’s. What a differ¬ ence in viewpoint and what austerity as compared with the voluptuousness, the freshness of skin, the fire of moistened eye that Renoir’s feeling of eternal springtime gave to his vision of the same subject. There are a few others who are usually included in the list of Master Impression¬ ists. Bazille met with them at the Cafe Guerbois, but was killed in the war before their exhibitions took place. Eva Gonzales, also died young. I have nothing of her work to show as even the one formerly in the Luxembourg has been removed. It was a pastel of a very young girl dressed in rose color, seated before a table looking at some dogs lying on the ground close to her, called Jeune femme. We have Manet’s Portrait of Ez'a Gonzales to show however. Forain exposed with them in 1879 when it was no 1 5 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS MOTHER AND CHILD, PROMENADE By Pierre-August Renoir BY CHARLES LOUIS B O RG M EY E R 1 5 3 CHILD WRITING By Pierre-August Renoir particular honor to be classed with them, so that now he de¬ serves some of the praise thrown their way. Caillebotte was an amateur painter—am¬ ateur I suppose because he had money and befriended less fortunate artists. Tou¬ louse-Lautrec was another sharp observer of public balls, of music halls and gardens of the nocturnal world. He was a dwarf and this accident of birth envenomed his life. He often gave a cruel, ironical, cynical touch to his habitual subjects, with the characters sharpened almost to the cari¬ cature. He was an able de¬ signer and handles his pure tones, with their brutal contrasts, with a sure touch. Among those who exhibited with the Im¬ pressionists one or more times and were therefore with them, if not altogether of them, are Bracquemond, Boulard, the Italian de Nittis, and younger than these, Lebourg. I have but few illustrations of THE SEASHORE AT BINERVILLE —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin, Ireland By Eugene Boudin BOATING —Courtesy Dublin Municipal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dublin, Ireland By Berthe Morisot BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 1 5 5 these men; several pictures by them were sold at the Hayashi Sale in New York this winter. A beautifully modeled head by Boulard, not at all impressionist; La Cote by de Nittis, a panel sketch of a mountain¬ ous and rocky Italian coast, and a partly landlocked bay on which several square- rigged black-hulled sailing boats ride at anchor in the distance. The rocks are of burnt orange tinge, the mountain tops are lost in purple mists, the quiet water is of the hue of the green turquoise—a big land and sea-scape within a small compass. We have illustrations of two Lebourg’s of the same sale, one an Effet de neige, a scene of a Paris Boulevard on a snowy day. The air is charged with fine, drifting snow, although the sky is cleared and the sun has struggled through the vaporous curtain near the horizon sufficiently to throw cool, green shadows over the whitened roadway. Two great white horses tandem, drag a cart. An occasional pedestrian is seen on the side¬ walks. The other Lebourg is a Paysage avec fleuve. A sluggish river passes across the canvas. Its brighter foreground darken¬ ing toward the middle distance under the shadows of the farther bank and its trees. Behind the trees, over the last hilltop, the sky is alight, with purple clouds. The foli¬ age of the far bank has the lines of autumn, and on the quiet water of the river float two row-boats, carrying people. Manet had one more battle to fight before he was through. This time Death was the THE DRESSMAKER (DRAWING) ■—Courtesy Musee dcs Beaux-Arts cle la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais By Berthe Morisot EFFET DE NEIGE—PAYSAGE D’HIVER (SNOW EFFECT—WINTER LANDSCAPE ) By Albert Lebourg —Collection of the late Tadamasa Hayashi of Tokyo, Japan BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 5 7 LES PAVEURS DE LA RUE BE BERNE By Edouard Manet (STREET PAVERS ON BERNE STREET) enemy. As early as 1879 the illness (Loco¬ motor-ataxia) started and all through the three years of its painful progress he worked. His Bar aux Folies-Bergere and the Portrait of Pertuiset were his most im¬ portant canvases of this time. After these he was forced to paint smaller pictures, among them many flower pieces, still-life studies and portraits in pastel. M. Duret says: “His life might have been prolonged to a certain extent if he had resigned him¬ self to bear his illness without having re¬ course to specious remedies. But the loss of his power of movement was insupportable to a man of his activity. The remedies which he took as a temporary stimulant but ultimately brought on blood-poisoning. At last it was found necessary to amputate his leg. He lingered for eighteen days after the operation, without ever realizing that he had lost his limb, but he was unable to survive the shock and died on April 30th, 1883.” Manet died in part ignorance of the effect that the movement which he had fathered was to have upon all subsequent art. It is pleasant to note that he was able to have the tablet Hors Concours on the last pictures he sent to the Salon. As is usual, when an ar¬ tist reaches the state of Hors Concours, the Government conferred upon him the decora¬ tion of the Legion of Honor, but be it —Courtesy Detroit Museum of Fine Arts Copyright, Detroit Publishing Company MOTHER AND CHILD By Mary Cassatt •V • ■ • . ■ ■ ,, . ' V' . ... ' ; - ■ v . LA COTE By Giuseppi de Nittis (THE COAST) —Collection of the late Tadamasa Hayashi of Tokyo, Japan 160 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS remarked, not without a pitched battle. Manet was openly delighted at the honor, for it placed him among the elect. We have traced our band of young men from their first break from the conventional to the time when finis can be put upon most of their careers. They have passed through distress and disaster, through war to peace. Those who are gone reaped some material benefit from the rugged path they had trodden, always with the exception of Sis¬ ley. Certain others are still among us giving the beautiful spectacle of an honored old age. The merry war still goes on, but they are taken seriously and recognized as serious, earnest believers in what they did. Books are written about them individually and col¬ lectively. Collectors gather from all over the world to attend sales of their pictures, the same despised pictures that the public scorned so few years ago. DANS LA LOGE By Mary Cassatt (IN THE BOX AT THE THEATRE) —Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts LES RABOTEURS DE PARQUET (PLANERS OF THE PARQUET FLOORING) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris By Gustave Caillebotte Gift of the Caillebotte family LE DEJEUNER (LUNCHEON) By Claude Monet — Courte°v of The Luxembourg Paris Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte The Master Impressionists [Chapter VI] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER I N 1894 Gustave Caillebotte died and left his collection to the Musee du Luxem¬ bourg with Renoir named as executor. He made it a condition in his will that the collection be accepted in its entirety and that there should be no discrimination against any one artist. Had it not been for this condition in the legacy, doubtless the Luxembourg would still be without a collection of Impressionists. The official fight against the Impression¬ ist “rebels” was led by men like Gerome and Bouguereau and started after Manet's death, when at Sargent’s suggestion Claude Monet collected money from Manet’s friends, with the object of buying the Olympia for the Luxembourg. He secured the $4,000 necessary and paid it to Mme. Manet. Then the picture was formally of¬ fered to the Luxembourg and refused. It took a year to bring about its acceptance and even then it was due rather to political 1 64 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS SELF-PORTRAIT (About the year 1875 ) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir influence and the importance of the names on the subscription list, than to a desire for the picture. All the Cafe Guerbois men, who were alive, figured on this list, with such men as Cazin, Carriere, Armond- Dayot, Besnard, Carolus-Duran, Boldini, Cheret, Fantin-Latour, our Alexander Har¬ rison, L'hermitte, the poet Mallarme, P'uvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Roll, Sargent and a host of other artists, collectors and dealers. It would seem that those who have formed a movement themselves are often the most bitter towards a new movement in art, for painters are but human after all, and the new movement must face bitter opposition from the old. Talent has ever been held in check by men of the older school. An interesting example of this is Room VIII of the Louvre (Salle des Etats) which contains many pictures by Corot, Millet, Courbet and Rousseau, and pictures by many another artist for whom the Salon of their day had no welcome. Works by these men were refused again and again, through the great influence of a certain artist, one Louis Cabat, a name almost unknown to us of today. If you want to see the fate of this little-great man, climb the stairs—and there are many of them—to the Thomy-Thiery Collection in the Louvre, glance into the darkest niches in the passage ways as you mount, and in one of them you will nearly see Autumnal Evening, “by Louis Cabat ( 1812-1878 ) ; Director of the Academie de France in Rome.” You will probably be the only one, out of the many who pass during the day, to pause. A parable for all to read is this relegation of Cabat’s one and only picture to oblivion, and the raising of the “rebel’s'’ pictures to the highest pinnacle. There is, however danger of taking this parable too much to heart. Many, with the fear of making the mistakes of Cabat et al. open the door too wide to prove that they are still young enough to be adaptive, and let in a good deal of truck. Gerome and Bouguereau were just as much opposed to the acceptance of the PIER RE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (From photograph about the year 1900) BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER ALFRED SISLEY (About the year 1868) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir Caillebotte legacy as they had been to the acceptance of Whistler’s Mother and Manet’s Olympia, but they had had their lesson and saw nothing but defeat in the end, if they started another controversy. So they wisely suggested a compromise to which they succeeded in getting the Caille¬ botte heirs, as represented by Renoir, to agree, but only after a long and bitter fight. Through this agreement the Luxem¬ bourg, instead of taking the whole collec¬ tion, was allowed to make a choice, but each artist was to be represented and all the pictures chosen were to hang in the Luxembourg. The residue was to be hung in other museums. The trouble about this agreement was that the Luxembourg was forced to swallow the bitter pill, Cezanne, with the sweet. There were sixty-five Im¬ pressionist pictures offered, and out of these, the Luxembourg selected thirty- eight; two pictures out of three by Manet; eight out of sixteen by Claude Monet; six out of nine by Sisley; seven out of eighteen by Pissarro; two out of four by Cezanne; six out of eight by Renoir; and all of Degas’ (seven). After the Luxembourg had accepted them they tried to do the right thing; a room was added, I believe, and the pictures were kept together. They tried too, to reconstruct the grouping of the Impres¬ sionists by adding a few other examples. Caillebotte had modestly refrained from including any of his own pictures in his gift, so his family was asked to give two. From time to time changes have been made and a few canvases by the men who formed the nucleus of the Caillebotte col¬ lection have been added; a few have been removed. To make the showing of the Master Impressionists more complete, ex¬ amples by Guillaumin, Berthe Morisot, Raffaelli, Toulouse-Lautrec and Lebourg now hang in this room. In the larger gal¬ leries a few are scattered about. It is said that the French government spends over a million francs annually on its art purchases and that very little of this has been spent CAMILLE PISSARRO (From Photograph) 166 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PAUL CftZANNE (About the year 1880) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir on the Master Impressionists. But in look¬ ing backward one sees that the Luxem¬ bourg did very little for Corot or Millet. They have rather honored men like Bou- guereau and Jules Lefebvre. But as I said in the beginning, it would be most unfair to judge the Impressionists by these pictures at the Luxembourg, as the majority of them are beginners’ work. Caillebotte was an enthusiastic Impression¬ ist himself and chose his pictures from the Salon des Refuses and from the first Im¬ pressionist Exhibitions held in 1874, 1876, etc. They were chosen with more passion than judgment and for his own pleasure. This naturally does not make them a com¬ plete document of this historical movement, but after they have ripened and aged, in this “ante-chamber to glory” they will cease being trophies of hazard and become united in a completed whole. Even now there are many Impressionist pictures among the collections left by men of fine public spirit to the French Government, that will go direct to the Louvre and wait for the ar¬ rival of those that have tarried at the Lux¬ embourg. Manet’s Olympia stayed there more than the traditional ten years after the artist’s death, although his friends were not forgetful of him, but were unable to overcome the opposition until Clemenceau became Prime Minister. Claude Monet, knowing of the friendship that existed be¬ tween Manet and Clemenceau (Manet had painted his portrait), besought him to have the Olympia promoted to the Louvre. His wish was immediately granted and she now must endure comparison with the Masters who have stood the test of time. Olympia was the source of strife from the time of her debut at the Salon of 1865, when she had to have police protection. She enraged the public at each fresh ap¬ pearance and she must have been glad in¬ deed to have entered into her well-deserved rest. Even here she is not quite out of the storm, for Peladan, one of France’s great critics, wrote the other day: “Olympia is the shame of the Louvre; there is nothing SELF-PORTRAIT By Paul Cezanne BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 167 ARM AND GUILLAUMIN (From Photograph) in the Louvre more badly painted, no poorer or more lamentable work.” We cannot blame the French Govern¬ ment for the stand it took against the Im¬ pressionists, for the names o f Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Ca¬ mille Pissarro, August Renoir, Alfred Sis¬ ley and Edgar Degas, whose pictures formed the Caillebotte bequest, were in dis¬ repute in all official art circles at that time. But the sting of the quarrel in France was greater, just as a family quarrel hurts more than a “neighborhood row.” The opposition in Germany is said to have broken one man's heart. Imagine, if you can, any one man in America getting excited enough over art to break his heart! Not that I recommend art to that extent. Poor Herr von Tschudi had a hard time of it when he tried to introduce the Master- Impressionists to Court Circles in Ger¬ many. He was at the time Director of the National Museum at Berlin and felt that the time had come for Germany to have a collection of French Impressionists. He knew that he would never dare use state funds for this purpose, so he collected money from all the rich men he knew and bought a well-chosen collection of ten or twelve pictures, among them Manet’s Dans da serre, Renoir’s Les enfants Berard, three by Cezanne, and others by Degas, Claude Monet, Sisley and Pissarro. There was violent opposition to their acceptance and Emperor William signified his inten¬ tion of viewing them personally and settling the contention once and for all. Now Em¬ peror William is a conservative in art and Herr von Tschudi saw his dream dashed to the ground just at the point of its realiza¬ tion and he himself in lifelong disgrace. As the day drew near he grew more and more nervous until the climax was reached DANCING GIRL, WITH FAN (DRAWING) By Edgar Degas ■—Courtesy Mus6e des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais 168 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE PONT DU CHEMIN DE FER 1 CHATOU (THE RAILROAD BRIDGE AT CIIATOU) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Courtesy of The Luxembourg. Paris Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte a few minutes before the Emperor’s ar¬ rival. Then in a panic, he took Cezanne’s “worst” picture and hid it. Emperor Wil¬ liam relegated them all to a less conspicu¬ ous position. So that is where they are to be seen now, Cezanne's worst among- the rest, way, way, upstairs, with no elevator to help one along on one’s pious pilgrimage. No use trying to see them easily by buying photographs, for neither official nor unof¬ ficial stands have them for sale. This 1 know, for I have tried myself. Herr von Tschudi transferred his energies to Munich after enduring about abuse enough in Ber¬ lin. He lived but two years in Munich but during those two years started another col¬ lection of Master Impressionists, which his friends are now completing as a memorial to him. It is called the Tschudi-Foundation Collection, and the Bavarian State has for¬ mally accepted the gift. But it will be some time before red tape will permit of its being seen by the public. Other German cities have followed the example set by Berlin and Munich. Bremen has Claude Monet’s Camille (1866) and Manet's portrait of Zacharie Astruc. Ham¬ burg has Manet’s Portrait of Rochefort, Fran k fort has Le dejeuner by Claude Monet. England has no public collection of works by the Master Impressionists. Mr. MacColl, the Director of the Tate Gal¬ lery, has said he envies Dublin its great col¬ lection, but he has no fund that can be used for this purpose and too much money is already being demanded from the public BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 169 to save the Old Masters that come up in the market from crossing the Atlantic, so in a way he blames us for England’s pov¬ erty in Master Impressionists, not the pub¬ lic taste. Dublin’s municipal Gallery of Art has been fortunate in having the marvelous and growing collection of Sir Hugh Lane on loan. A letter from a Dublin friend tells me they are worrying more than a little in Dublin, for the twice-changed date draws near when the condition the owner made must be fulfilled. This condition is a most reasonable one, simply that enough money be raised to purchase a site and erect a suitable building to place the treas¬ ures in. My friend says, “We have no rich middle class, as you have, on whom you can always depend for gen¬ erosity and our country gent¬ ry are squeezed dry. Many of them have, however, re¬ sponded nobly. It will be a disgrace to the Irish and to the Irish-Americans if we cannot save this wonderful collection for Dublin.’’ Here is a chance for all good Irishmen to spread art in Ireland rather than polit¬ ical unrest, or some multi¬ millionaire might invite the collection as a whole “across the Atlantic,” but I would ad¬ vise him not to visit Dublin for some time after the offer was made. They may not like the pictures, but Paddy has a love for his own. This collection, with its extraordinary examples of Daumier, Millet, Corot, Rous¬ seau, Manet, Claude Monet, Renoir, Puvis de Chavannes, is unique in that it has been the choice of one man alone, not only the pictures actually belonging to Sir Hugh Lane, but those chosen by him as Honorary Director of a body of men, brought together in 1905, with the patriotic idea of securing works of Irish painters. Gradually the scope has enlarged; hardly gradually, either, for in these eight years they have accom¬ plished prodigies, until the gallery is classed as “the best attempt at a really representative collection of modern art in the world.” This would argue that a collection brought together by one man, provided he be a Sir Hugh Lane, stands a better chance of having strong examples than one where a number of men influence one the other, until the taste goes into a sort of melting-pot and comes out a com¬ posite nothing with all the strong likes and LA BALANCOIRE (THE PICNIC) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Courtesy of The Luxembourg , Paris 170 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES TOITE8 ROUGES (THE RED ROOFS) By Camille Pissarro dislikes modified. Here is a chance to use a color simile, as an example of the noth¬ ingness of a mixture, and show off our perhaps recently acquired knowledge. Let “A” be represented by Red with a violent love for martial subjects; “B” by blue with a sentimental taste, and “C” by the cheer¬ ful, sunny yellow. They meet to choose a picture; each being obliging is willing to compromise on a common ground pleasing to all three. This they do, mingling, one taste with the other, red, yellow and blue, until, low and behold, nothing but white light remains, which is no color at all, they tell us. This tends to no grave mistakes nor on the other hand, does it tend to the collecting of pictures by “rebels.” The Caillebotte Collection at the Luxem- —Coxcrtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte bourg is a case in point. They were cho¬ sen by one man, with a too close viewpoint to be sure, but without his radical taste the Luxembourg would have been poorer by a good many degrees. One word more and then we will get to the individual pictures that fill the Caille¬ botte Legacy Room. What was there about these pictures that shocked the pub¬ lic of a generation ago? Why can we now look upon them without a shudder and even find pleasure in them ? Everyone asks himself these questions on entering this room today. The answers are many and an effort to put ourselves back into the state of mind of that public would be al¬ most hopeless, for we would need to close our eyes to all that has taken place in art BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 173 LE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE (THE BALL AT THE WINDMILL OF THE GALETTE) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris t; t-r. i i' Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte for many years. The influence of Manet, Sisley, Claude Monet, Cezanne and Pis¬ sarro has insidiously crept into the work of every artist and every school. Impressionism was no different from other movements in that it was based on certain ideas suggested by great artists pre¬ ceding the movement, or as it happened with them on scientific discoveries in light and color. Like other movements, parts of their works reappear in the works of others later on for all movements pass on some¬ thing through the work of men of talent, perhaps not so much through the geniuses for they put their whole heart, soul and head into their work and it seldom comes out of their hands. But talent is different. It does not mean genius, but it is a pretty good article to have nevertheless. These geniuses, or men of talent, whichever you prefer, suddenly confronted the public, al¬ ways until lately intolerant towards move¬ ments in art, with works whose power and vigor in color shattered all preconceived notions and altered the whole focus of the organs of sight. The effect at first was one of utter bewilderment. Then time and familiarity helped to accustom people to the new order of sensations that this astounding use of color gave, and today, now that the contrast with the conven¬ tional methods of the official schools is past, they do not seem even revolutionary. Then there is the prestige of age. Time has united and equalized warring elements and we ourselves have changed. We now know that many of the things they painted corre¬ spond exactly with the appearance of na¬ ture. because we have commenced to go direct to nature for our own impressions, 174 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS TERRAINS DE CULTURE EN FLANDRE (LAND IN CULTIVATION IN FLANDERS) By Jean-Charles Cazin —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris just as they did. And again we are fortu¬ nate in not having as many prejudices to overcome as did the public of Manet. For example, Manet’s early public believed in keeping art on such a high level that only gods and goddesses should be put on can¬ vas, without clothing; that landscapes should be well behaved and stationary, re¬ gardless of rain, sunshine or fog. The Impressionists proper, in whom our in¬ terest lies, had the public between 1865 and 1886 to contend with. Manet had accus¬ tomed it to the technique of bright colora¬ tion and emancipated it from the tradi¬ tional envelopment of shadow. All the Impressionists had to do was to apply these methods to painting in the open air, then to their magical touch open flew the doors and out poured a fund of knowledge that has very materially enriched the world. I always feel like suggesting to my friends who go to the Luxembourg for the first time, that they visit the other rooms first before entering the little room, dupli¬ cating as it does one of the Impressionist exhibitions held in the seventies. There is a largeness of design, a freshness and originality in the feeling for color, and a spirited and powerful expression in the works of these men which might make the outward appearnace of the works found in the other rooms temporarily unattractive. The room is too small, too crowded, which can be said of all the rooms in the Luxem¬ bourg. Perhaps a good picture ought to be a good picture under all circumstances, but it takes time and imagination to isolate one and create the right surrounding at- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 175 mosphere for oneself. It takes time to lit¬ erally follow the instruction; “View things steadily and view them as a whole; the whole view then becomes unified when we absorb and live in it.” If we have this longing to be part of it, to live its life, to be at one with the picture, it must be a good picture to us. But as I said, it takes time, and a small room like the one we are studying in a busy gallery is not the easiest place in the world in which to practice mental gymnastics. There is a peculiarly personal sensation that comes to one on entering this room, with its sun-flooded pictures; a stupefac¬ tion which at first leaves one incapable of analysis and a prey to a tumult of sensa¬ tions. In most modern exhibitions there is no coherent mixture of pictures, no intrinsic relationship of either purpose or idea. But in this little room there is the problem of light epitomized. There is the sensation of the light of the street, of a sun-flooded room. There is, too, a sensation of incom¬ pleteness. One feels the hesitation of things almost beautiful. Many of them ac close range seem but weird patchwork of color cast at random on the canvas, uncil studied at their own distance, when their truth, virility and power come forth and we get the feeling of the sun and of the shadows. In the first general impression of the room, as a whole, we quickly see that the pictures are all moderate in size, with the possible exception of Caillebotte’s R a b o- teurs de parquet, which faces us as we enter. I am told that in a small picture an artist can control the unity much more easily than in a very large one, where he is forced to run back to look at it often, while painting it, and as a result the small pic¬ ture goes more easily as a whole to the LES POMMIERS (APPLE TREES) By Carolus-Duran ■Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 1 76 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES FOINS (HAY CUTTERS) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris By Jules Bastien-Lepage eye of the onlooker. The Impressionists generally avoided working on large can¬ vasses. This means nothing in particular, as a little picture does not necessarily mean a little subject. We feel the absence of de¬ tail, of the fi n e quality o f surface, b u t there is dash and cleverness, and notwith¬ standing the many things missing that we have accustomed ourselves to look for in a picture, there is the feeling of undeniable force. There is no sensation of the seren* ity of the mountains and rivers, or the "ma jesty of a sky where gods could appear,” but rather rendering of natural effects of light and of color with the greatest attain¬ able scientific truth. We can see at a glance that here are all of our old friends; many of the pictures are familiar by name at least, and many of them fail to come up to our expectations, for the flowery de¬ scriptions have misled us. We had better start with Manet’s Le halcon (1869), so that he can have no quarrel with us. Here is a good oppor¬ tunity to apply what is said of Manet: “He applied the truths that objects in light appear flatter than they do when placed in a dark studio, with light shot down on them from only one direction.” “That in the light there are scarcely my THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS 178 LE BALCON (THE BALCONY) By Edouard Manet ■Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 179 shadows, and that modeling therefore, is not to be obtained by lights and shadows, but by careful rendering of the planes of more or less light.” He had “no feeling for his subject ex¬ cept in so far as it proved a problem to be solved; in this he was essentially a paint¬ er’s painter.” Manet secured “His brilliancv by the simplification of values.” He was noted for the “Vigorous simplicity of his masses.” “Superb use of outline.” “Bold, magnificent line.” “Excessive originality.” “Beauty of handling.” “His hand was dowered with the gift of quality.” “There was force and distinction in his brush; “Freedom and simplicity in his execution.” “His search was for the real appearance of things as revealed by light.” “His paint was beautiful as that of an old master, brilliant as an enamel, smooth as an old ivory.” “He had delicate faculties of vision and notation, but his hand was less happy in ren¬ dering than his eyes in per¬ ceiving.” “His pictures are rarely adequate.” “He was one of the subtlest colorists.” It would be impossible to apply all these general re¬ marks to any one picture, but many of them may suggest others more original as we try to apply them. The raison d’etre for Le balcon was the search for reality. Manet hap¬ pened to see some such a group as this and chose it as a subject to paint. It is reality, but not a reality lige his Olympia where e made the pose himself and painted it as reality, so that this is a step in advance of his Olympia (1864). The two women in white suggest nothing of their mental traits, although the one seated on a divan is a freely suggested like¬ ness of Berthe Morisot. All three, and the dog, are on the balcony presumably to see something, or to get a breath of fresh air, but as to knowing what they are thinking of or talking about, or what they would really enjoy seeing from the balcony, we are at an utter loss. Their personality is not revealed to us as a casual glance at real people similarly placed would reveal it. The man in the background is nothing but a fashion plate of the time. I feel sure that Manet’s brother would have more per¬ sonality than Manet has given to him in this portrait. But what is the use of look- fiTUDE (STUDY) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris By Toulouse Lautrec BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 1 8 1 ing- for, and finding, the usual fault with Impressionism? In Berthe Morisot he has almost caught at the thought. Four or five years later he painted a portrait of her called le Repos, where he succeeded in sug¬ gesting her personality through her pro¬ found and melancholy eyes. When Manet sent le Balcon to the Salon in 1869 the Public was simply contemptuous, not an¬ gered, as they had been over his Dejeuner sur I'herbe and Olympia. The green balcony in the foreground and the brilliant blue in the background that Manet used to superpose a heightened note of color on a general scheme, already lum¬ inous in tone, caused the laughing crowd to stand about it all day. They were amused by the funny little dog just as the cat in Olympia had amused them. They thought the women slovenly dressed, neither pretty nor attractive, but they did not see that there was a compelling something that made them take greater interest in this picture than in any other. The value of the painting itself and the peculiarities of the technique were what ought to have in¬ terested them in le Balcon. Angelina (1867), or, as it is catalogued, A Lady at her Window , is painted in rather a hard manner with a contrast of blacks and whites. The Game of Croquet, includ¬ ed in the Caillebotte Collection and refused by the Luxembourg, was one of two of the same subject and was painted in Alfred Stevens’ garden at the top of rue des Mar¬ tyrs. NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS (NOTRE-DAME OF PARIS) By J. F. Raffaelli —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 183 Pissarro is well represent¬ ed. The original seven of the Caillebotte bequest are still in evidence, but we have illustra¬ tions of five of them only. He is possibly the cleverest with the brush of all these men, but he does not give his message with the same force that Cezanne does or with the brusqueness of Manet. Dur¬ ing the fifty years that Pis¬ sarro painted his rustic scenes of fields, peasants, shepherds, woods, rivers, gardens and his city scenes of the boulevards, the city gates and barricades, he never knew a moment of repose. His life was one long joyous effort to interpret na¬ ture. When he painted his city scenes he painted them synthetically, without minute details. He suggested the noise, the hum of the boule¬ vards, the picturesqueness of the city gates or the grandeur of the cathedrals. At the Luxembourg there are none of this type, but rather of those filled with the deep re¬ pose and poetry that springs from happiness. His reds, whites and greens do not seem forceful enough for autumn, the season of the corn harvest, when the strength of summer is concentrated on ripening its fruits. They seem a little dry and not very vibrant, but this may be the fault of the paint. Perhaps while we are speaking of this particular quality of season it might be interesting to look around the room with that thought in our minds. Take Claude Monet’s Dejeuner. We know at once that it is a very hot, dry, summer day, with everyone gone to take DANSE USE (DANCER) By Edgar Degas a nap after eating a satisfying luncheon. Renoir’s Pont chi chemtn de fer d Chatou is full of Paris spring. Young spring at that, when the horsechestnut trees are in blossom and the trees are full of sap. He 184 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS UNE CORVETT RUSSE DANS LE BASSIN D L’EURE —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris (RUSSIAN WARSHIP IN L’EURE HARBOR. HAVRE) By Eugene Boudin used the greens of spring in his Moulin de la Galette and in Les bords de la Seine a Champrosay. In Sisley’s Bords de la Seine the feeling of spring is hollow; it is too dry. He fails to give us a sufficient feeling of strength in this dull, gray, brown, spring- day. The joy, the life and force of spring is wanting; his buds do not suggest the hope of the blossom that is to come. Perhaps a glance at Carolus-Duran’s Les Pommiers in a nearby room may be of in¬ terest just now, for in that can be seen the spirit of spring in all its freshness and force. Here are the quivering gleams of the bloom on the grass, like glittering sprays of steel; the splashes of white, yel¬ low, blue and red flowers that scatter flashes of color with all the freedom of spring. In the same room with Les Pom¬ miers is Cazin’s Terrains de culture en Flandre. There is no doubt of season here. The colors lack the freshness and buoyancy of spring. There is the deep, uniform glow of the ripening red-gold wheat and the paler stain of oats or barley. Bastien-Le- page’s Les joins suggests the same season, by the grave and even colors of the ripe hay crop, and by the cut hay that loses all its natural brightness as it fades and dis¬ colors under the sun’s heat. The Impressionists were presumably the painters of nature par excellence, but there is a monotony about their atmosphere at times, that leaves much to be desired, and as to their skies, Moore says: “The dark skies and black foreground hold their own against all Claude Monet's cleverness; and it has begun to be suspect¬ ed that even if nature be industriously and accurately copied in the fields, the result is not always a picture. The palette gives the value of the grass and of the trees, but. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 185 alas, not of the sky. The sky is higher in tone than the palette can go; the painter therefore gets a false value. Hence, the tendency among the plein airists to leave out the sky or to do with as little sky as possible.” They used atmospheric pink in large quantities, preferring it to salmon pink, which is more stationary and less vibrant. You will see this pink in Renoir’s Balan- goire, in his Moulin de la Galette and in his Liseuse. In all these there is a bluish green with a touch of violet and this pink. You see through his pink and it makes for vibrancy. In his Pont du chemin de fer a Chatou the skyline is blue and white but withal pink. Sisley’s Canal du Loing has pink in the sky, in the ground, in the trees. The blue is not very pronounced and the clouds are not very white. They are pinkish. Claude Monet's Givre is rosy and so catches the eye at once. He has chosen a pink morning light. Such works remain fresh to the eye, while those with a darkened leady color soon go stale and lifeless. For instance, Claude Monet’s Regates a Argenteuil is dead. Toulouse-Lautrec’s Portrait of a Woman is dominated by yellow and purple and so is less attractive to the eye. This applies to Raffaelli’s Les vieux Convales¬ cents, and Lebourg’s d Herblay. Raffaelli’s Notre Dame de Paris has a leady quality of atmosphere with little, if any, pink in it. Berthe Morisot has overdone the pink bv covering her whole canvas with red and thereby making it appear an unimportant and small work. Three of the pictures by Sislev are so MORET-SUR-LOING, 1S19 (MORET ON THE RIVER LOING) By Alfred Sisley 186 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS VUE DE SAINT-MAMMAS (SCENE AT SAINT-MAMMAS) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris By Alfred Sisley Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte different that one would not think they had been painted by the same man. Compare Saint Mammes (in which unfortunately the oil in the paint has gone bad) with Lisiere de foret au printemps with its vibrant and strong colors of nature and Les Bords du Loing. And see how very differently the same man may express himself. In the Lisiere de foret au printemps, there is a distinct lack of vision. The sky, while blue and giving forth a sensation of heat, is lacking in real feeling. The grain is ripening and there is no doubt that with the ripening grain he sought to convey the sense of heat which usually accompanies this. Somehow this picture fails to carry conviction and this is especially so when you compare it with Renoir’s la Balan- qoire, where there is a plausible representa¬ tion of pleasure, or with Raffaelli’s Vieux Convalescents, where melancholy grays, blacks and browns convey the feeling of poverty and old age. Sisley may be called the sweet man of this school; his works being quieter, sweet¬ er, less forceful than those of the others. If you compare his Bords de la Seine with Renoir’s picture of the same river banks, you will see the great difference in force and snappiness. Sisley’s is chalky and lacks atmospheric color. Les bords du Loing and Le canal du Loing were not among the six of the Caillebotte legacy. The Canal is neither the bright, sunny spring day of Renoir’s Balangoire or the dirty gray day of Raffaelli’s Convalescents; it is halfway between them. The light is between sun¬ light and cloudy, neither clear nor dull, a compromise. All the tints are washed out. This makes the picture very nearly neutral BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 187 and less obvious as you look around the room. There is a dramatic quality, how¬ ever, about it when your eye does finally single it out. The low house and water, in contrast to the tall, slim trees, make for the dramatic. Turn and look at les Toits rouges by Pissarro and see how it stands still, while Sisley’s Canal keeps on moving. It is the air, the sensation of the atmospher¬ ic envelope that brings this about. In Sis¬ ley’s la Cour de ferme the red roof is the big thing in the picture. Les Re gates de Moulsey, pres de Londres has a mauve feeling all over it. It is Cezanne’s influence that is felt here, but Cezanne’s purple has a more biting quality. Lebourg is unfortunate in his example in this room. The brushwork is clever, in his a Herblay, but the weak, greenish color fails to hold one’s attention and it gives no sensation of light. The proportions of its various parts are bad. The hill should have been the big thing in it. There are better Lebourgs at the Petit Palais. Boudin had at one time two pictures in this room, but they have been moved to another room. He seemed to be out of place among these searchers of light, a guest, and as it proved, an unwelcome one. Le Moulin de la Folie a Crosant, by Guillaumin, is not by any means one of his best. There is a thin vision. As you look at it you see a little of everything. Your eyes penetrate it; it is not solid in feeling, but it is solid in value. Curiously I have had but few opportuni¬ ties to study the works of Armand Guillau¬ min, and the best of these came to me quite unexpectedly in New York, in January of this year. In the sale of the Collection of Tadamasa Hayashi, there were fourteen canvases by Guillaumin, twelve being land- EFFECT DE NEIGE (EFFECT OF SNOW) By Alfred Sisley 188 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES BORDS DU DOING (SHORES OF THE RIVER LOING)—Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris By Alfred Sisley scapes, one a portrait in oil, and one a pas¬ tel, the head of a child. It really was a unique opportunity to study his work, not to find it beautiful, per¬ haps, nor to compare it with the best that his followers have been able to do after having taken all he and the other Impres¬ sionists knew and improving upon that knowledge; but to study the methods of a man who was in at the beginning of the Impressionist movement. Of course there were admiring crowds around the poor ex¬ ample of Claude Monet, Degas and Renoir. These were names known to everyone; pic¬ tures by these men cost money! As I mingled with the throng of visitors, I was strikingly impressed by the indiffer¬ ence shown towards all except “known” names. One of the visitors, a man of some real prominence, who afterwards bought one of the high-priced pictures, spoke up bravely and said, “Worst show I have ever seen in these galleries. Who the deuce are they anyway?” motioning towards Guillau- min and Boulard. The two charming can¬ vases by Boulard, not being catalogued, re¬ ceived no glances whatever from the gen¬ eral crowd, and they were interesting pic¬ tures outside of the fact that Boulard was one of the plein-air realists, and a man recognized as having at least contributed his mite to the Impressionist movement. There are three of his works in the Luxem¬ bourg, L’enfant du Pecheur, Petite anx cerises, and his father’s portrait—all inter¬ esting pictures but not being three-starred a la Baedeker, he was passed by the intelli¬ gent public. That was natural enough and BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 189 to be expected, but less excusable was the attitude of a group of students. They had gone over the exhibition and their in¬ structors’ summing-up was: “Well, I guess after all, we can show them a thing or two.” It seemed a wrong way to approach the subject, if they were trying to get anything out of their afternoon. They complacently let this opportunity slip by of studying the works of several of the pioneers in a great art movement of thirty or forty years ago, and we have few of these opportunities in New York. The western cities are much more fortunate in this regard. They felt quite satisfied with their own efforts at imi¬ tating what had been largely adapted from the men they were anxious to “show a thing or two” to. But they were young; when they begin to try to cre¬ ate something original them¬ selves they will, perhaps, be more appreciative of what the Impressionists did for them. Before I know it, I will be¬ come an enthusiast myself, and I certainly did not start out as one in the beginning of these talks, but the fight they made for their principles ap¬ peals to me and new beauties in their works open up to me as I study them with the idea of passing a little of my pleas¬ ure along. This sale, that I have spoken of, made me al¬ most feel as if I were holding a brief for them, so few of the visitors were ready to seek for the intention of the artist, so few were open-minded in their quest. I wondered what, if any, profit had come to the m. I wanted to say, “Come and look at these good examples of Guillaumin and let the poorer examples of perhaps better men wait a minute. See how he ' has painted the sensation the object gave to him. Over there is a field under cultivation, bor¬ dered beyond by a line of trees, deep blue at the horizon. There is a peas¬ ant’s cottage in Finisterre rough hewn. See the sparse foliage of the few trees, the peasant woman in the distance, the personi¬ fication of the lethargic patience of the toiler of the soil. How could you possibly say that the pollard willows in his Saules are sapless, that the stunted trunks are any¬ thing but those of gnarled trees? Are they living, growing trees coming up from good solid ground, or are they trees grown, the Lord knows how, from the Lord knows what ? Do not these trees represent more than a photographic imitation? Does not PORTRAIT OF BOY By Auguste Boulard — Collection of the late Tadamasa Hayashi of Tokyo, Japan 190 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LISEUSE (WOMAN READING) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 1 9 1 LE LOUVRE, SOLEIL D'HIVER (THE LOUVRE—WINTER SUN) By Camille Pissarro LA SEINE (THE RIVER SEINE) By Albert Lebourg —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 192 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS the emotional expression grip nearer to the heart of life?” Who can say whether they are beautiful or not? I read the other day that most people look for beauty in a picture, in the objects represented, which they expect to remind them of beautiful real things, and beauty is as difficult to define as drunken¬ ness. So these Guillaumins may be beau¬ tiful to some, ugly to others. The hard, bright coirs that he uses to get his effects may set one man’s teeth on edge while they exhilarate another. The massive force shown in these particular pictures was so great that one lost sight of minor sensa¬ tions. But alas, few looked at them ; they flocked around the Degas, for has not everyone heard of the enormous sum paid for the Dancers at the Bar ? But towards the Sisley and the Guillaumins they gave but momentary glances. I could not help but wonder to myself whether we had built about ourselves a great barrier, a barrier to which admittance is limited, unless the artist's name has been heralded in advance, and unless some over- enthusiastic millionaire has bid up his wares. It would seem that an artist must be a picturesque figure—a bit of a mounte¬ bank, like Whistler—must receive fabulous prices, or must have a genius for self-ad¬ vertisement before he can hope to be at¬ tractive to the public mind, which means financial success, and be then regarded (save the mark!) as a great artist. LI SI ERE DE FORfiT AU PRINTEMPS By Alfred Sisley —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris LES ROCHERS DE BELLE-ISLE (THE ROCKS OF BELLE ISLAND) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte By Claude Monet —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris The Master Impressionists [Chapter V II] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER I N last month's talk I digressed from the pictures actually hanging in the Lux¬ embourg to a general lecture on Guil- laumin, and now it is time to get back to “work.” We can call the time we have wasted the hour we would ordinarily pass at Foyot’s, eating our luncheon among the senators, or a longing for companionship might lead us to go further afield, perhaps way up toward Montparnasse, where, if we have luck, we might join Gedney Bunce with his bodyguard of jennes, or Morrice or Alexander Harrison, or Troubetzkoy, if they were not lunching at the Ritz with one of their thousand and one friends. That is the beauty of many of these men who have “arrived” in every sense of the word; they stay young enough to enjoy a plat whether served with all the trimmings of the Ritz or with the simple good fellowship of the little restaurant. Eating in Paris is a whole chapter in itself and it is as difficult to hurry over the ceremony as it seems for me to get started anew on the Impressionist pictures hanging in the Luxembourg. Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette has surely attracted your attention before this, but it is worth while waiting for. Here is a living example of what Renoir did when he applied to figure-painting the methods that 1 94 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA GARE SAINT-LAZARE By Claude Monet the Impressionists applied to landscape. Here you can see for yourself how in doing this he added emotion. Le Moulin de la Galette is a picture of one of the bals which still take place up on the heights of Butte Montmartre overlook¬ ing Paris. These bals form a link between the middle seventies and today. Renoir felt only the gaiety of this Sunday afternoon. His interest was in the seductive movement of the people, in the mobility of lights and shades, in the crowd carried away by the rhythm of the dance, and in the vibrating and hot atmosphere. He saw everything in the dazzle of a warm and humid day which gave a palpitating flame to all his contours. Like Degas he attempted to get the instantaneous, but with a more tender vision. His people are dancing in sur¬ prisingly diverse poses, and this gives a certain reality to the illusion. He almost (THE RAILROAD DEPOT SAINT-LAZARE) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte ■—Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris went to conventional methods in order to express this view. Over the figures under the sunlit trees, with light falling upon their hair and laughing faces, falls a gen¬ eral violet tone, a color he used for the pure joy of using. The blue-violet of the woman’s dress is one of his favorite colors The little, svelt person in a striped dress sitting on the bench in the foreground, is a most forcible example of the separation of colors (red and blue). Separate her from all the rest and she grows and grows in beauty. She breathes with life and gets perilously near suggesting her frolicsome, nervous charm, which goes badly with the Impressionist theory. In La Balangoire (1876) there is the same feeling of gaiety, happiness, pleasure and joy, but there is not the same feeling of quick movement. One is a dance where all is quick repartee, quick movement; the BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 195 VBTHEUIL By Claude Monet L’EGLISE DE VBTHEU1L By Claude Monet Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte (THE CHURCH AT V&THEUIL) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 1 96 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS JEUNES FILLES AU PIANO By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (YOUNG GIRLS PLAYING THE PIANO) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 1 9 7 LA CAT HE DR ALE A ROUEN (THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN) By Claude Monet —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Pans other is a family group stand¬ ing under the foliage in a park. The light goes through the trees and dapples them with splashes making the picture just as gay as the Bal but with as much difference in the gaiety as there would naturally be between the gaiety of a bal in Montmartre and a family picnic in the Bois. The Balancoire is a beautiful symphony in blue. Look at it quickly from a dis¬ tance. with a glance, a blink, and see how it resolves itself into blue and white. Big blue and white spots of drapery. See how the woman's dress casts blue shadows on the green foliage. We usually associate pic¬ nics with spring, but Renoir has not chosen a spring day. The greens have not the flush of the tender greens of that season, for the trees are not sappy enough. It is a sum¬ mer day and the summer day is in reality his subject. His problem, if he thought of it as such, was not to paint the local color of the objects, but their color as acted upon by the light. In other words, it is a problem of values, for these varying quantities of light reflected from the various planes of the objects are nothing more or less than values. Take the white tablecloth, beloved by all the Impressionists; white as its local color, but it varies in degrees of whiteness ac¬ cording to the quantity of light reflected from its different parts. Renoir’s Au Piano (1892) (a picture not belonging to the Caillebotte Bequest) has the same subject, light giving the impor¬ tance, not life. A hanging or tapestry is given the value of a personage. Time has undoubtedly hurt this picture, as all the suppleness, the life, seems to have dried out of it and left only the material reality. The colors pass, without resistance, one into the other. Those in the wood of the piano and table are lifeless; the curtain hangs an inert mass and weighs down the picture. This An Piano is an example of Renoir’s habit of painting the same subject several times, because of some detail he saw that he thought he might improve upon. At a first glance one might imagine them dupli¬ cates, but on closer study there appears a subtle difference. This I believe was his 198 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS (WALK ON THE CLIFFS, 1882) PROMENADE SUR LA FALAISE, 1882 By Claude Monet second attempt at painting Au Piano. There is also a third. In a way this was following in the foot¬ steps of the old masters, who often made replicas of their work, thinking nothing of the “criminality,” as many would now call it, of repeating the same thing several times. The fact is that in passing to another subject an artist sometimes changes less than in repeating or improving on the old subject. Renoir’s Young Girls at the Piano are, judging from the drapery, furniture and general taste of the room they are in, the daughters of moderately well-to-do people. There is no blatant vulgarity in the colors; the reds, blues and greens are not the reds, blues and greens of wealth, and so there is neither luxury, nor lusciousness in the work. The Portrait of Madam X has another feeling. It is a sort of musical tone of emotion. The blacks, the green-blacks, are of a higher taste of selection. It is inter¬ esting to compare these blacks with the blacks Carolus-Duran used in his Lady with the Gloves, and while you are looking at the lady, see how strongly Manet’s influence is shown. As I started to say, Madam X is in an entirely different milieu from that of the little girls at the piano. Her setting is rich, but in good taste. She herself is distinguished, full of charm. She is no slender sylph, but at the point where it behooves her to take care if she wishes to be d la mode in the good year of 1913. But, heavy as she is, there is not the slightest suggestion of commonness or vulgarity in this portrait of the wife of a music pub¬ lisher. There is a delightful piece of color- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 199 PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR From photograph in 1911 BERTHE MORISOT Self-portrait SELF-PORTRAIT —Collection Pellerin By Paul Cezanne CLAUDE MONET From photograph 200 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS L ESTAQUE Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte By Paul Cezanne —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris ing in the bit of still-life formed by the music books on the piano. This picture was not one of the Caillebotte collection, but bequeathed to the Luxembourg by M. Martmann and was only accepted after many objections. Torse de jeune femme is a most satis¬ fying expression of out-of-doors, probably the best in the room. The technical part is poor; the brushwork has neither begin¬ ning nor end. Any child could have painted it as far as the technique goes, but there is no child living who could have seen this as Renoir saw it, and so here is a painting that should be judged by vision and not by hand. At a glance you see the entire work as a vision. You grasp it at once; it is infinitely more sudden than if painted in the methods of any of the older schools. Connectedly it passes on before you as a vision of light, and it is as a vision of light that this work takes hold of you. Renoir’s Liseuse is a small picture of a young girl industriously reading a book. It was one of the original Caillebotte bequest. Le pont de chemin de fer d Chatou (1881) is much more of a picture of spring, with the horsechestnut trees in bloom, than of a railroad bridge. The whole scene sings of spring and youth, sap and strength. The sky line is blue and white. The air, the trees, all moisture-laden, show a day quite different from the bright day of his green and blue Bord de la Seine d Champrosay. These eight pictures by Renoir at the Luxembourg are important. Among them two are of the utmost importance— Moulin de la Galette and Balangoire, for they are two of his best and most characteristic BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 20 1 works. They are also two of the original pictures that brought public abuse down upon the heads of the Impressionists at their exhibition of 1877. The general violet shade of the figures, dappled with splashes of light, and the ground under¬ neath the trees—in other words, the colored shadows—are here in full measure and show us plainly what the public shied at. Mary Cassatt has one of her pastel Mother-and-Child pictures. We are all familiar with them and like them, for they picture something we know. They are almost story pictures in this, but far removed from the “illustrated dictionaries” as someone has called the class that Alma- Tadema’s historically correct pictures belong to. Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot are the only women painters now included among the Impressionists hanging in the Luxembourg, an honor that means much. By what particular road Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Child traveled to reach this height I do not know, but Berthe Morisot’s story is an oft told one. Berthe Morisot held, as Madame Eugene Manet, a position of some importance in P'arisian society. This position undoubtedly gave her delightful friends, but it was against her when she wished to be taken seriously as an artist and not as a dilettante. It was through the poet Stephane Mallarme that La jeune femme an bal was admitted to the Luxembourg not long after the admission of the Caillebotte collection, which, by the way, had no works by her. In 1894 Duret was to have a sale of his pictures and Mallarme, who literally wor- AUVERS; LA VALLfiE By Paul Cizanne (AUVERS; THE VALLEY) —Collection Vollard 202 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS DANSEUSE SUR LA SCENE (Pastel) (DANCER ON THE STAGE) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte By Edgar Degas —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 203 TORSE DE JEUNE FEMME ATJ SOLEIL (BODY OF YOUNG WOMAN IN THE SUN) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir Legacy of Gustave CaiUebotte —-Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris shipped Berthe Morisot, thought it a good opportunity for the Government to secure representative canvas by her. He chose the Jeune femme an bal as one of her best works and invited the officials to see the picture. It was easy to invite, but to get them to accept was another thing, and it was only through his personal friendships that he finally accomplished it. As soon as the picture had a chance it spoke for itself. 204 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LES FIGURANTS (Pastel) Legacy of By Edgar Degas It was purchased by the State and placed in the Luxembourg and hung among the works of the other Master Impressionists, removing Berthe Morisot, once and for all, from the ranks of the amateurs. She has two pictures in the Moreau-Nelaton collec¬ tion that will enter the Louvre later. The young woman in the Luxembourg picture is full of charm and distinction as she stands in her evening gown with all out¬ lines softened by the envelope of out-of- door air that surrounds her. Seldom will you see a work more feminine in its delicacy without affectation or dryness. Long before this I am sure that you have been casting glances at some of Claude Gustave Caillebotte (THE FIGURANTS) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris Monet’s pictures. They are not as full of strength, force and vitality as some of the works of the other men. You may even feel that he himself is somewhat lacking in individual character, but that is a mistake. There is no lack of force of character in Claude Monet. He fought his own battles and then took a hand in Manet’s when Manet was gone. He stood by Zola when the country was aroused to fury by his de¬ fense of Dreyfus, and he refused the Dec¬ oration of the Legion of Honor when it was offered him, remembering too well the insults heaped upon him in the past. There is a certain feeling of likeness in five or six of these pictures by Claude BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 205 FEMME AU BAIN (Pastel) (WOMAN AT HER BATH) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte By Edgar Degas —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris UN CAFfi BOULEVARD MONTMARTE (Pastel) (A CAFB ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTE) By Edgar Degas Legacy of Guslave Caillebotte —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 206 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS DANSEUSE NOUANT SON BRODEQUIN (Pastel) By Edgar Degas (DANCER TYING HER SLIPPER) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte —Courtesy Luxembourg, Paris Monet; at any rate, more so than in the eight by Renoir. His interest has been centered in the material aspects of nature, air, mist, haze, fog, veils and vapors; dust, wind, rain, snow, sunshine, light; the earth itself and the waters of the earth. He is opposed to the academic outline and was among the first to feel that line and color were dependent on light, so he places lines as far as possible where nature places them. This arrangement of line was new to French painting, and opened a vast field for imitators. Claude Monet does not often indulge in the feeling of the life that lives out of sight in his pictures, but Le dejeuner has this feeling markedly. One wonders who owns the hat, where she is; in other words, the picture arouses our imagination. There is a pe¬ culiar feeling of blue running across the lower strata of the picture. These stratas are not put in by the artist so that we can see them, but are merely suggested; if we were called upon to prove them, we would have some difficulty. The house is red, and red flowers run horizontally in and through the middle of the picture. Les regates a Argenteuil is not the best of a number of similar pictures that he has painted of the same subject. The air feels stationary; it is not vibrant enough; it is dead. In his Gare Saint Lasare, we have no complaint to make of deadness of air, nor to hunt for the station flaming with un-enveloped smoke. It is truly the thick atmosphere around a railroad station. He has taken a moment when a locomtive has just rushed un¬ der the glass dome of the station. The smoke from the engine rises blue in the enclosed foreground and drifts away pink in the open sunlight beyond. Compare this smoke-filled air with three of Renoir’s pictures, the Moulin de la Galette, the Seine d Champrosay, and the Pont du Chemin de fer d Chatou. All three out-of-door pictures, but where smoke and dust do not penetrate and in consequence the air is thinner and so ap¬ pears clearer. The oil has gone wrong in his Les Tuileries, which probably accounts for its deadness. In Le Givre Claude Monet chose a pink morning light that fits in admirably with the scene. The sun is still low, and as it rises it penetrates a vaporous haze. It is 208 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS WASHERWOMAN —Collection Sir William Eden By Edgar Degas LA RADE DE VILLEFRANCHE By Eugene Boudin (THE ROADSTEAD OF VILLEFRANCHE) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 209 EE REPOS, PORTRAIT DE BERTHE MORISOT (REPOSE, PORTRAIT OF BERTHE MORISOT) By Edouard, Manet -—Collection G. W. Vanderbilt an expression of nature with the cold brilliancy of the sun on the whiteness of a radiant day in winter. The emotional side of this picture is that of frost, cold and thawing ice. The emotion tone feels icy, almost as if you were looking at the scene through ice. A bright blue, a (dark) gray, a dramatic or stormy sky would have altered the entire feeling of this picture. In his Rouen Cathcdrale this emotional side is of old age, while in the Railroad Station it is of smoke, steam and movement. This last is easy to see, but the sug¬ gestion of old age in the cathedral is more subtle. He suggests it in his sky, a yel¬ lowish sky that goes well with age. This sky makes the stones of the cathedral look older. Had he used a clean, bright, blue sky it would have taken from the age of the scene. Claude Monet uses his skies principally to intensify his local subjects. The Cathedral is a good example of this; the yellowish sky and the old, long-exposed stones of the cathe¬ dral are in character, and the whole sug¬ gests age. It has a dramatic quality, too. It fills the whole frame and runs out of it, with a big feeling that makes it striking. This picture of the faqade of the Rouen Cathcdrale is one of many that Claude Monet painted of the same subject —twenty-five of them, I think. He com¬ menced to systematically paint pictures in series with one called Meules (Haystacks) and followed it by this series of the Rouen Cathedrale. One would think this an easy way to paint, choose a subject and keep working at it until it is worn out. That would be true were one to paint the actual thing, but to paint as Claude Monet does, “the fugitive motive disengaged from the unchanging groundwork,” is another thing. It takes a wonderfully clear perception of things and rapid execution, for these ef¬ fects tarry for no man and overlap one the other most maddeningly. It is said to have taken him over three years to pamt this series and to have left him exhausted. The discomfort of sitting in a curiosity shop window opposite the cathedral all those days while he painted, also deserves some recognition. I have tried the experiment of taking an object, as Claude Monet does, and looking at it with the idea of seeing the luminous BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 1 1 LES INVITES ATTENDANT LA NOCE By J. F. Raffaelli (THE GUESTS ATTENDING THE WEDDING) -Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris atmosphere or envelop that colors it dif¬ ferently at different times of the day. The Metropolitan Tower in New York hap¬ pened to be the biggest and most conven¬ ient object for me to study with this in mind. Its bigness I felt would exaggerate the vibrations to a point where my un¬ trained eyes might see them. It did not need the exaggeration of the Tower; the luminous envelopes are easy to see, and that they vary from hour to hour and from day to day and from season to season is also easy to see. Claude Monet gave expression to this feeling for light most freely in Le Givre and in the dazzling Church at Vetheuil, asleep under the sun of a winter’s day. In Les rochers de Belle Isle, the most forcible of his works at the Luxembourg, he used as his subject rocks and vast cliffs bathed by an ardent summer sea. This sea is blue-green bordered by plum colored rocks; the sky is heavy, the yellow in it brings out the freshness and the rough tuggedness of the rocks and sea. I like this picture. It often happens that I feel the irritation that Moore felt when he wrote: “The merits in Claude Monet’s pictures often strike you as having been obtained by excessive accomplishment in one-third of the handicraft and something like a formal protestation of the non-ex¬ istence of the other two-thirds. In looking at scores of his pictures you will see hardly any change or alteration in his manner of seeing or executing, or any development soever in his art. At the end of the season he comes up from the counfty with thirty or forty landscapes, all equally perfect, all painted in precisely the same way, and no one shows the slightest sign of hesitation, and no one suggests the unattainable, the 2 1 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LA ROCHE DE L’ECHO (CREESE) A CROZANT (THE ECHO ROCK AT CROZANT) By Armand Guillaumin —Courtesy Messrs. Dalpayrat Freres, Limoges beyond; one and all reveal to us a man who is always sure of his effect, and who is always in a hurry. Any corner of nature will do equally well for his purpose; so long as a certain reverberation of color is obtained, all is well.” It is treading on delicate ground to criticise Claude Monet, for with most of the American public he can do no wrong. He has been well exploited by his backers and if rumors can be believed, he has made high prices imperative if they would save their bacon. A hesitation on their part to accept his season’s output has led to the sudden increase in the value of the pictures in question, even up to the point of doubling the price demanded in the first place, and a further hesitation tripling it. This is the sort of gossip that circulates around the Haystack Series. Perhaps it is his revenge for the years of poverty that he suffered when he was doing creative work. I suppose if we had been truly polite we would have done Caillebotte the honor of looking at his two pictures first. The large one, Raboteurs de parquet, would naturally attract our attention both by its size and position, but there is no dramatic quality in either that or in his Toils sous neige that forces one’s attention; in fact, one might pass them by half a dozen times without seeing either of them. Some canvases possess this dramatic ele¬ ment which holds up one’s attention even in a crowded gallery. Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette has this quality. It is a picture of a dance hall of the people in full blast. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 1 3 Every space is filled, everything and every¬ body is in motion, alive, doing things. Claude Monet’s Dejeuner has it too, but here it is reached, not by crowds moving, but by the emptiness of the deserted table. The Moulin de la Galette, which by the way has nothing in it at all, technically, and is as naive as if it had been painted by a child with no trace of brush marks, no feeling of division but a fine and grand old mix-up, a perfect jumble of color, has not¬ withstanding all this, intense dramatic qual¬ ity. Les raboteurs de parquet lacks the dramatic. Caillebotte has made his people all the same size. Had he brought his men forward and placed them in the foreground it might have helped. Cezanne’s lack of idea of proportion in Corn de Maisons a Auvers causes him to lose the dramatic ele¬ ment. His sky, house and ground are too much the same size. Ordinarily his works are massive and well balanced, but the Luxembourg is no place to study Cezanne. These two pictures mixed up with others, more startling, fail to weave about us the spell of poetic glamour that Cezanne can do at his best. One thing that you can see in this little picture of Corn de Maisons a Auvers is Cezanne’s purple, the neutral color that he introduced. This color under his touch is vital,, forceful, brilliant, but not particu¬ larly charming. Charming is a word one would never apply to a picture by Cezanne; powerful, ugly, yes; but charming, no. Compare this picture with others in the room and its strength and ugliness shine forth. It even seems coarse when compared LE PUY BARION (CROZANT) By Armand Guillaumin (THE MOUNTAIN BARION) —Courtesy Messrs. Dalpayrat Frcres, Limoges 2 1 4 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE PUY BARION (AUTOMNE) CROZANT By Armand Guillaumin with many. It has not the “poor” look of Pissarro’s Chemin montant a t r avers champs, nor the rich look of Renoir’s Horsechestnuts at Chatou. L’Estaque, the other Cezanne picture in the Caillebotte collection, seems not to have been quite finished, but Cezanne often left his canvases bare in spots and this may have been intentional, but it gives an efifect of the sky having gone wrong. It sepa¬ rates into sections; it is too white and is out of tone. The sky in itself, the water, the mountains, and the garden in the fore¬ ground are all solid in value. About the time these pictures were be¬ ing painted Cezanne was called the “Ape of Manet,” “Barbarian” and other pet names. No wonder that he retired within his shell and exiled himself at Aix in order (THE MOUNTAIN BARION) —Courtesy Messrs. Dalpayrat Freres, Limoges to work out in peace projects which would, he believed, revolutionize the technique of painting, and convince the world that paint¬ ing was the “registration of one’s colored sensations.” Cezanne’s portrait of himself fills one with pity for the “soul struggling for release, fatigued yet eager, the paint a means and not an end. The idea every¬ thing, the real man grown old searching for that which can never be wholly found.” Rafifaelli’s Vieux convalescents repre¬ sents a park in front of a hospital. The hospital, in Louis XIV, forms the back¬ ground of the picture and cuts off the gray sky. In the foreground is a group of three convalescents seated or standing around a bench. An old man leaning on his cane walks down the tree-bordered path that leads to the principal entrance of the hos- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 215 pital. The white bonnets of the two sis¬ ters of charity give a touch of light to the left-hand corner of the picture. Many feel this is one of Raffaelli’s best works. He means to express poverty and old age; the men are miserable enough to suggest both of these trying conditions, without adding as he has the depressed landscape. The trees without branches, the day, the land, are steeped in gloom; even the smoke from the chimney makes a vain effort to rise from its gloomy surroundings. It is what might be called a selection of effect. The figures, the landscape, the sky, are in gloomy harmony, in complete unity. The whole thing is in the color of poverty. That of dirty rags. Even his forms are ragged; no silks or satins or r i c h embroideries could suggest the misery he has put into this picture. The other examples by Raffaelli in the room seem weak in comparison with Les vieux convalescents. Notre Dame de Paris is clearer, more luminous, apparently com¬ posed with pleasure. The figures seem al¬ most as large as the church. Les invites attendant la noce would make a fine illustration for Puck, Life or Judge. The poor people are most uncomfortably dressed up in their Sunday-best to attend the wedding. Mother is giving the final touch of style to father in buttoning his huge glove with a hairpin that she has worked out from under her elaborate cap. The umbrella is meant to be funny, but it is pathetic. The whole picture is like one LE LAVOIR By Camille Pissarro (THE WASH HOUSE) Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte 2 1 6 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS POTAGER; ARBRES EN FLEURS (KITCHEN GARDEN; TREES IN BLOSSOM) By Camille Pissarro Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris of the ridiculously funny-pathetic things that brought laughter and tears to a Weber and Fields audience in the old days. Reunion publique is a portrait of Clem- enceau, who is spoken of as France’s Roosevelt. The men in the background are portraits of many of the great men of France. The other Raffaelli pictures are easy to understand. Raffaelli does not really be¬ long to the Master Impressionists, but there is more reason for including him among them than for including Boudin and there are two Boudin’s pictures hanging at pres¬ ent in the Luxembourg. Perhaps in an at¬ tempt to round out the show they chose him as one who was in a way a “Precur¬ sor” of Impressionism. Flad they included Jongkind and Lepine, the idea would have been clearer. We hear one Italian opera after another and hardly know that they have changed from one opera to another, but when they change from Wagner to De- Bussy or Strauss, one decidedly knows the difference. The Impressionists made some such change in art. But we will not cavil at the authorities for including pictures by Raffaelli, Toulouse-Lautrec and Boudin among the Master Impressionists. If we did, we would miss seeing some very inter¬ esting pictures and the seven by Degas would need to be weeded out if they were consistent in keeping within the lines. When writing of the Treasures of the Luxembourg, I was unable to get photo¬ graphs of the works of the Canadian W. J. Morrice. I regretted this exceedingly because the few pictures I have seen by him appeal to me particularly. Not enjoying being balked of my prey I made up my mind to beard the lion in his BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 2 1 7 den and see what I could do in person when letters had failed, so one day I found my way over to his studio, and was sent in unannounced. I felt an unwelcome guest, but became so fascinated, so enamoured by the few pictures hanging about, that I put my pride in my pocket and stayed without any encouragement whatever, like any cheeky book agent. Had Mr. Morrice read my thoughts, he would have paid me to stay and form a “Society for the Admira¬ tion of the Works of W. J. Morrice.” Some of the subjects I saw are repro¬ duced in the illustrations of this article and while he is not a Master Impressionist, he is a legitimate successor of theirs. Not that he decomposes his tones, or uses the comma of Claude Monet, or the super* posed touches of Cezanne. He is too per¬ sonal for that. He is one of the few who know where to stop and still hold to the es¬ sentials. With the greatest simplicity pos¬ sible he gives with astonishing truth the volume, the density and the mass of the objects. I think it was the simplicity of his pictures that appealed to me. There is nothing there to suggest episode or effect. He, in the most simple manner, artistic¬ ally records the intimate beauty of the lat¬ ent richness of the color of the scenes along the Quais of Paris; of bits of Nor¬ mandy; street scenes of Montreal or the brighter, gayer scenes of northern Africa. Corot’s saying, “Art is made up of sacri¬ fices ; it is done with nothing and every¬ thing is there,” applies to the work of Mor¬ rice. Fustel de Coulanges said, “It is neces¬ sary to give ten years to analysis before devoting one hour to the synthesis” and as an example, added, “never had Tintoretto, LA BROUETTE (THE WHEELBARROW) By Camille Pissarro Legacy of Gustave Caillebotti -Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Parit THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS TOITS SOUS LA NEIGE By Gustave Caillebotte (ROOFS UNDER THE SNO W J Gift of the Caillebotte family —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris Titian or Rembrandt more freedom than at the end of their careers. They per¬ mitted themselves these licenses only at the canonical age.” This might be a hint to the many young painters who unlike Mor- rice commence with the synthesis and think they have genius at the age they ought to have simply talent and application. We have looked at all the pictures in the room, except those by Degas. 1 hey stand apart in many ways. One hardly notices them because of their quietness and possi¬ bly too because of their smallness, but when one gets to them they have much to say. The original seven of the Caillebotte Col¬ lection are still to be studied in their origin¬ al places, so far as I can remember. It is difficult to see pictures by Degas. He never exhibits at the Salons and rarely at other exhibitions, and it would take a brave man to visit him at his home uninvited. He says that strong respect for his art disin¬ clines him to expose to the general and un¬ intelligent gaze, works which demand a highly developed artistic education to ap¬ preciate. The Luxembourg is as good a place as I know of to study Degas work. A little later when the Camondo Collection is installed at the Louvre there will be an additional number of his canvases to study. These at the Luxembourg are small pic¬ tures wherein all his genius of observation is not shown. They are, as someone has said, “Life as seen through a keyhole.” They are examples of the subjects he has made his own; ballet-dancers, singers, bath¬ ers, etc. To succeed in holding the atten¬ tion with such subjects proves, without doubt, that the intellectual interest in a work of art does not r^st ies- strongly in BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 19 the interpretation of the artist than in the subject itself. Certainly there are beautiful subjects, poetical, philosophical or histori¬ cal, which have enriched humanity, but Degas has taken subjects that up to his time had been reputed as vulgar or undig¬ nified and through his intelligence and sen¬ sibility has made them into works of beauty. Naturally those who look for beauty in a picture to remind them of beau¬ tiful things, or who look for a bit of senti¬ ment will find Degas hideous. He was not trying to express the beauty of line of his model, but movement. Everyone has taken a hand at writing about Degas since he won the distinction of having a picture of his sold for the high¬ est price ever paid while the artist was still living. That reminds me, after the Rouart Sale, Degas went to see the picture that brought the wonderful price, let his fingers pass over it lightly, his way of seeing things nowadays, and in his terse way said, “Yes, yes, he who painted this was no fool, but he who paid that price, was a big one.” But to go back to what has been said of Degas. Some of the high sounding phrases I will note down and with their aid and with patience to look, any one can see the unique excellence of Degas’ art. “Pastellist of first rank.” “A master in technique.” ‘‘Chief excellence is in design.” “Figures almost classic in their sharp truth and sober distinction.” “Vibrant force of design.” “Sinuous line to express life.” ‘‘Marvelous delineation of true move¬ ment, emotion and attitudes.” ‘‘Living rhythm of a gesture, superb in its strength and suppleness.” “Synthesis in attitude.” BORDS DE LA SEINE (SHORES OF THE RIVER SEINE) By Alfred Sisley Legacy of Gustave Caillebotte —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 220 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE CANAL DU DOING By Alfred Sisley (THE LOING CANAL) —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris “Complex play of light on the bodies,” etc., etc. “The observation of Degas is that of an Impressionist. He sees like Monet, but he does not penetrate; his sight is extraordi¬ narily acute; he catches the thing on the wing as it passes and he repeats it. There is a do not move feeling in his manner; he arrests the movement in the effort to ex¬ press an instant of life. He has the taste for the accidental gesture where it is sig¬ nificant, an indicator of a moment of life, a professional gesture in that it expresses a habit.” These criticisms, culled from many sources, make interesting reading when standing before the actual pictures and about all that can be added to them is to call attention to the refinement of his color. His vulgar, brutal people and their refined clothes make a combination or refined vul¬ garity that in him is a virtue, but one that has engendered many vices among his imi¬ tators. Degas has not the color range of either Manet or Claude Monet. His color ranges through quiet gray harmonies. The scheme usually is gray and black with here and there a color note, that is a veritable touch of genius. The small bit of red slipper belonging to the poor, worn-out, homely woman bathing is one of these touches. It makes the whole picture big. A bit of red used dexterously in the Cafe boulevard Montmartre raises that picture from a mere picture of two vulgar women seated in front of a cafe to something bigger than the subject. Les figurants or “supers” are a number of grotesque figures seen at the back of the stage, dressed in reds and yellows. A painter said about Degas’ Danseuse nouant BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 22 1 son brodeqnin, “That perspective of t h e shoulder blades with the varying planes has not been equaled since Michael Angelo.” Probably the greatest favorite among the Degas pictures at the Luxembourg is La danseuse, although it is not generally con¬ ceded to be the best one there. This pink- gray dancer as she whirls fluffily toward us, has a momentary beauty that comes near to making the picture beautiful in the usual sense of the word. The dirty, ob¬ scure background makes the dancer by con¬ trast dainty, delicate and sweet in color. Her leg, her arm and her silhouette radiate through the whole scene. There is a unique charm about this picture, with a curious touch of irony, that it is difficult to put one’s finger on, unless it be in the man looking on in a callous way in the background. There is always some undercurrent of irony in Degas’ pictures. There is also an extraordinary acute criticism of life. He is an intense realist, almost a caricaturist. His nudes are marvels of truth; he paints the common woman off her guard in the privacy of her room, a slovenly, distorted creature, yet there is, in his Bathers for ex- ample, something essentially, pathetically feminine, as they stand in a helpless man¬ ner with bent knee to support the body. The doubtful hand which catches the chair, the raised foot, the inefficient arm and hand with the sponge—all cry aloud their femi¬ ninity. These women who bathe themselves, who dry themselves, who do all the other THE BEACH AT DIEPPE By James Wilson Morrice —Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris 222 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS things before our eyes that belong to the privacy of their own rooms, were doubtless suggested to Degas as subjects by t h e Japanese, possibly, by Outamaro and Kiyo- naga, who painted many women at their toilet. The feeling with most of us, is that the Impressionists painted their pictures freely, easily, for that is the effect they have on the mind, but Claude Monet, Pissarro, Re¬ noir and Degas all worked day after day over a picture. Degas himself says his work is not spontaneous; that he labors over it, worries over it and tries again and again. It looks spontaneous enough, but in art, I fancy nothing very fine is done easily. The final result may be so done, but countless studies and efforts must have led to this result. In the days when crowds would gather in front of Goupil’s show windows, which, thirty years ago were on Boulevard Mont¬ martre, and make merry with loud laugh¬ ter over the works of Sisley, Pissarro, Claude Monet, Degas and others, the pop¬ ular view was, that these artists should go back to school and take drawing lessons. The great joke was that they could draw. Degas had been a Prix de Rome pupil at the French Academy in Rome and partic¬ ularly noted among the pupils for his draw¬ ing. Moore speaks of some of his early work as “marvelous work” and says that the world never saw such work and will never see it again. Moore is always ex¬ treme in his opinions, but always interest¬ ing and with a kernel of truth hidden in his exaggerated views. He tells the youth- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 223 ful aspirant for honors this: “For those who are thinking of adopting art as a pro¬ fession, it is sufficient to know that the one irreparable evil is a bad primary educa¬ tion. Be sure that after five years of the Beaux Arts you cannot become a great painter.” “How the masters of Holland and Flan¬ ders obtained their marvelous education is not known. We know that Potter learned his trade in the fields in lonely communi¬ cation with nature. We know, too, that Crome was a house painter, and practised painting from nature when his daily work was done. Nevertheless he attained as perfect a technique as any painter that ever lived. Morland, too, was self-taught. Is there anyone who believes that Morland would have done better work if he had spent three or four years stippling draw¬ ings from the antique at South Kensing¬ ton?” And then in the next breath he raves over Degas’ drawing that he learned in a school. Perhaps it is well to feel that a school can neither make nor unmake a genius. It is not a matter of study. Ex¬ quisiteness of color perception cannot be evolved through intellectual effort. Deli¬ cacy and refinement of feeling are qualities that are inborn in the artist’s temperament, and no school will give them to him, al¬ though it might under some conditions take them away from him. LE QUAI DES GRANDS AUGUSTINS By James Wilson Morrice Courtesy of The Luxembourg , Paris 224 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS MERE ET ENFANT (Pastel) By Mary Cassatt (MOTHER AND CHILD) -—Courtesy of The Luxembourg, Paris DEUX FEMMES SUR L’HERBE (TWO WOMEN RESTING ON THE GRASS) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) The Master Impressionists [Chapter VIII] By CHARLES T HE Luxembourg Collection of Im¬ pressionists is most disappointing— how disappointing I never realized more keenly than when I entered a Loan Exhibition at Paris held in the beautiful gallery of the Hotel de la Revue in the rue de Ville I’Eveque, in July and August of 1912. At that time there were gathered the most typical works of each of the art¬ ists who formed the group of the Master Impressionists. Never was the word “ret¬ rospective” better employed, for it was LOUIS BORGMEYER truly a look backward along the way. Never has there been a better opportunity to see what the analytical period of art of the Nineteenth Century has done for the world. The exhibition was wonderfully com¬ plete. Owners of pictures from all over the world responded to the request for their pictures most generously and well they might, for never have they been seen to better advantage. It is astonishing how much difference the surroundings make, not that a rug or a chair more or less would BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 27 SUMMER, VIEW IN BRITTANY By Camille Pissarro (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) make a gem out of a mediocre picture, but it does give an altogether different air to them. It is easy to realize that if someone were to show us the most beautiful Yelas- LA FEMME A L'BVENTAIL By Bdouard Manet —Courtesy Musee des Arts Dtcoratifs quez or the most noble Raphael, without frame, in the lost package room of a dry- goods store, or in a pawnshop, the effect would not be the same as if the picture were hung in the Tribuna at Florence or in one of the rooms of the Wallace Col¬ lection. Outside of the beauty of the collection, MISS BEDFORD By Toulouse-Lautrec it was most satisfactory because of the dif¬ ferent examples chosen, with a rare dis¬ cernment, from each period of each man’s work. One could see more clearly than at any other time the role that each member of the group had played in the whole move¬ ment. There was Claude Monet, not as we 228 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS KJ -3 BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 229 see him in isolated examples, but represented by canvases that showed him step by step as he passed from one influ¬ ence to another. The differ¬ ence between his first and last work was so great that one wondered how a man could so little resemble himself. The organizers had the ex¬ cellent idea of joining to this finished chapter of art the following one which has not yet reached its last word. Toulouse - Lautrec, Forain and Van Gogh were in the two last little rooms ready to move up into a longer but no wider room when Mary Cas¬ satt should be advanced into the Salle de Gloire. As one passed through the widely opened, enormous doors into the entrance hall, one’s breath was taken away by a blaze of color. On the walls at either side were no less than twelve large pic¬ tures of flowers, great bunches of flowers, baskets of flowers, gardens of flow¬ ers, and just flowers, painted on the canvases without stem or leaf. There were peonies, roses, nasturtiums, chrysan¬ themums, dahlias, not like any other flowers you ever saw; great, rich masses of color from which emanated a sense of the joy of life, a sense, too, of Nature’s glorious progidality. R e n o i r’s flowers were different from Manet’s, and Manet’s were different from Claude Mo¬ net’s, and Claude Monet’s certainly differed from those of Cezanne, Berthe Morisot and Raffaelli. For the lover of flowers there was a feast in this ante-chamber. Renoir had thirteen examples in this one exhibition. LE DEJEUNER, 1868 (LUNCHEON) (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) By Claude Monet —Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, Frankfort, Germany His whole life might be traced, step by step, through these thirteen pictures. His flowers were by far the richest in color. Among them was one that looked familiar; it proved to be the same vase of flowers that he used in La famille Charpentier of the Metropolitan Art Museum in N e w York. This vase by the way, with a water bottle, glass and plate, forms a delicious bit of still life in that picture. Renoir painted flowers as regularly as the season for flowers came. Those painted 230 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS in his early years were more actual copies of na¬ ture with something lost of the soul of the flowers in the copying. The later ones painted during his best period are richer, al¬ though not so correct from a botanical point of view. It is their color that gives these their character of flowers far ahead of those having the exterior appearance of a botanical bouquet. His latest flowers partake of the same excess of soft¬ ness which is found in PORTRAIT OF GUSTAVE GEFFROY By Paul Cezanne (Exposition d'Art Moderne. Paris, 1.912.) his nudes of this period. Manet’s flowers are more energetic. They are more suggestive of the sensations flowers give than of the flowers them¬ selves. Roses, tulips, lilacs, peonies, were his favorites. Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot were represented by chrysan¬ themums ; Raffaelli by grapes and flowers, and Cezanne by mixed bou¬ quets. But I could not stay all the morning getting my¬ self soaked with the color NATURE MORTE (STILL LIFE) By Paul Cezanne Collection Jos. Hessel BY CHARLES LOUIS BO ROM EVER 23 1 of these glorious flowers, and I passed up the few steps into the great room, the Salon Carre of the Exhibition. This room itself is a marvel among galleries. I gave one look around and then—“I must get photographs of these pictures and pass this pleasure along to the few who are good enough to read what I so stumblingly tell.” I was so intense over getting the photographs that I almost forgot to look at the pictures, but came back to earth before closing hour. It was not that I particularly liked them, individually, but en masse the impression was one of exhilarating brilliancy, not as refreshing to the soul as stimulating to the eye. I felt myself to be in the midst of the very life of these men. Portrait busts, in bronze and marble, scattered about, of Claude Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro and Rafifaelli, added to this feeling. A quick thought of what it would have meant only a few years ago, if such an exhibition had been held, flashed through my brain and sobered me a little. My eyes were being attracted by first one picture and then an¬ other ; many gave me a nod of recognition, and it was like seeing a friend, and re¬ member, I do not like them, nor do they give me much personal pleasure (with ex¬ ceptions, of course), but perhaps the first excitement is like when we stop to speak to an acquaintance with a flash of pleasure when we really do not particularly care for him and the flash dies down if the meeting lasts too long. My roving eye caught sight of several Cezanne's that I had always wanted to see. To see these I needed to pass Manet, but AUVERS; LE VILLAGE (ATJVERS; THE VILLAGE) By Paul Cezanne —Collection Vollard 2 3 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS Pictures were not meant to be smelled of anyway, ac¬ cording to the old joke. But as I moved out of the danger zone, other things caught my eye. How could anyone see anything but Manet’s Woman with a Fan hanging between four of Cezanne's. Cezanne's must have indeed been strong to have attracted my eye from this life-sized woman stretched on a couch. I won¬ der if that is Victorine! I was told that there was a pic¬ ture of Victorine of Dejeuner and Olympia fame among Manet’s. Can it be this Woman with the Fan? No, surely not, unless she has grown older and wiser. Clothes do surely make a dif¬ ference ! At any rate, there are the fans in the back¬ ground that Manet probably added just as he did the stool, the book, the glass and the lemon in Duret’s portrait. I there was lots of time. Here were some wish those Cezanne apples would either fall of his tipsy cups and saucers. I moved off that table or settle themselves for good, away from them, fearing a catastrophe. I will have to pick up that knife in about LE CAFE A REISCHOFFEN (THE CAFE AT RE1SCHOFFEN) By Edouard Manet LE FOYER DE LA DANSE (THE GREEN-ROOM) By Edpar Depas (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 3 3 two minutes. What beautiful, beautiful colors! I had better start at the beginning and do this thing right or I will skip something. Were I looking for my own pleasure alone, I would move about and get a little here and there, but I had better copy a profes¬ sional critic who just came in and started at number one, notebook in hand, looked at each picture, sometimes with a glance only that meant he knew all that picture could say to him, or else that it would not be mentioned in his next newspaper article. Well, here goes! I will start as he, the critic did, at the door, where there is a group of fourteen Renoir’s. They date from very early ones to those of quite recent date. Through them all, particularly in the early ones, runs the joy as well as the torment of painting. This di¬ vision between his pleasure and his inquietude is one of the secrets of where his charm lies. One could never say of his work as has been said of some of Claude Monet’s. “A dozen pictures all equally perfect; no one shows the slightest hesitation, and no one suggests the unat¬ tainable, the beyond.” There were a number of typical Renoir women whom one always knows at sight. Renoir had a fashion all his own of interpreting portraits of women. It was with a real voluptuousness that he painted their eyes, mouths and breasts. All of Renoir’s women have this character of eyes and mouth. They seem so personal to the painter that they are like a signature. It is almost as if he were in love with them personally and not quite calm enough to make his brush perfectly exact. Seldom does he make one feel that his model is without coquetry, or he without a keen sense of possibilities. Some clever French¬ man has said that Renoir's women outside of France look as if they were homesick and communicate that feeling to any Frenchman looking at them. The two sisters sitting in a box at the theatre is one of two pictures Renoir paint¬ ed using the same title La Loge. How many Loges the Impressionists painted! There are Manet’s of the Luxembourg, Mary Cassatt’s of the Boston Museum, and Renoir’s two we have illustrated, all as dif¬ ferent as the artists themselves. This one of Renoir’s is less known than his other, perhaps more solid and positive, but La Loge of 1874 takes, with his Danseuse of FEMME A SA TOILETTE (WOMAN MAKING HER TOILET) By Berthe Morisot 234 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS DANSEUSE REVENANT POUR SALUER (DANCER RETURNING TO MAKE HER BOW TO HER AUDIENCE) By Edaar Deans (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) the same year and the two Luxembourg pictures, highest rank among his pictures. To show Renoir’s versatility as well as his development, they had a landscape, a garden with a greenhouse, as intimate and gracious a thing as one could cite, and a Venetian scene painted when he made the fateful journey to Venice, when a great painter was spoiled according to Moore, or when he went back to Venice, not to find what he had lost, but to paint Wagner, who laughingly said Renoir made him look like a “Protestant clergyman.” Sur la terrace is an adorable young woman wearing a red hat. There is in this the same agitation of light that one finds in all of Renoir's pic¬ tures. Manet’s large and capti¬ vating woman with the fan we have already glanced at. Yes, I think it is Victorine— not that it makes any real difference who she is, but it satisfies a gossiping instinct to know something of the person represented. We saw her first simply because she was in the line of vision: the real clou of Manet’s offerings is further along the long wall, where there are ten canvases that would be difficult to gather together again. Among them there is nothing like Le dejeuner and the Olympia; not one that would make us remember that Manet was most unconventional in his choice of subject, but on the contrary five examples of Manet's power of making people look really alive, la¬ beled portraits. Three others that are portraits but not called so, also one of the dog Donki. The portraits are of Manet's wife, a well-born Dutch lady, who has nothing of the Parisian about her, as her next-door neighbor Madame Guillemet has. As she masquerades un- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 23 5 TROIS DANSEUSES (THREE DANCERS) By Edgar Degas (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1012.) der the title of La Parisienne, she feels herself very chic, I am sure, in her make-be¬ lieve man attire. Tailor-made dresses, I am told, were not as common in those days as now, but Mine. Guillemet sports one of green, with big lapels. Her heart failed her at the last minute, or Manet's did, and he softened its se¬ verity by throwing some fur around her shoulder. One of the other portraits is of Albert Wolff, who, as he sits leaning back rolling his cane on the arms of his chair, looks far too pleased with being painted by Manet to have included him among the Impressionists, when he wrote of them as “Impres¬ sionist - lunatics, who take paint - brush and canvases, throw a few colors on the canvas at random and then sign the lot. In the same way the inmates of a mad¬ house pick up the stones on the road and believe they have found diamonds.” Wolff's portrait and the world - renowned criticism were of the same year, 1876. With all the good qualities that this portrait has, there are still several degrees be¬ tween it and that of Pope In¬ nocent by Velasquez. Thoughts like this will creep in. A portrait of Delaroche- noire, an animal painter, has peculiar col¬ ored foliage as a background. It is the color of wine lees. Manet's L e Cabaret d e Reichschoffen has at least two other names; La servante de bocks and Verseuse de bocks. There is another quite similar picture. The waitress is serving bock in both of them to the man in blouse and cap, who is smoking a pipe and intently watching a female singer on the stage. The tapestry back of the waitress, the high hat in the audience and BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 237 only half a singer showing are the points in this picture that differ from the other. This is a portrait of a real waitress placing bock before a real customer. Manet paid both the waitress and her chaperon-lover to sit in his studio for him. Le linge has a most interesting personal history. It was one of the two pictures re¬ jected by the salon in 1876 opening up a war against Manet that had been closed for eight years. This was one of the pictures that he invited artists, collectors, critics and friends to come and see whether he had been justly treated or not. This exhibition of his became the event of the season. Each one was supposed to write his or her opinion in a book left for that purpose. Moore wrote of Le Linge: “In Le Linge no challenge is sent forth to anyone. It is Manet, all Manet, and noth¬ ing but Manet. The bright¬ faced, simple-minded woman, who stands in a garden crowded with the tallest sun¬ flowers, her blue cotton dress, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, her hands plunged into a small washtub in which she is washing some small pieces of linen, expressed homely life in the French suburb. Her little child about four years old has strayed in¬ to the foreground of the pic¬ ture, just in front of the washtub, and holds a great sunflower in his tiny hand. The bright, clear painting in which violet shadows were beginning to show, fright¬ ened the jury. The color effects of the bright blue blouse, the large green plants and the white linen on the line strained Manet’s palette to the utmost.’’ Time has changed these colors, although time as a general thing has treated Manet's pictures kindly, especially the earlier ones. There were two still-life subjects to round out Manet’s list. One was of six oysters open on a plate with the halves of a cut lemon, a china pepper-pot and a fork. The other had an eel twisted into a semi¬ circle with a mullet behind, all resting on a white cloth. A French critic who wished to give the highest praise possible to these two pictures said they were part of Manet's heritage from Chardin that he, the in¬ heritor, had known how to make to bear fruit. That sounds a little involved, but DANSEUSES DERRISRE LE PORTANT (DANCERS BACK OF THE SCENES) (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) By Edgar Degas 238 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE PIANO (THE PIANO) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Exposition cl'Art Moderne, Paris, 1012.) the meaning is there if you want to bother to search for it. The eel was so firmly placed where it belonged on the table that the frivolous thought came to me that I was glad Manet painted the wiggly thing and not Cezanne. The Tete d'etude has taken on more patine than most of the others. I do be¬ lieve this study of a young woman with a blue ribbon in her hair and a white waist is Victorine! I am getting Victorine on the brain—well. many another has had that trouble before me. Un bar aux Folies-Bergere was the first of Manet’s pic¬ tures to have the magic words of Hors Cone ours on its frame. The jury the year before (i88i) had conferred this honor upon him. The salon of 1882 was the last salon Manet ever exhibited at, although he lived about three years longer and paint¬ ed many pictures during that time. La Parisienne was one of them, but this Bar aux Folies-Bergere and the Por¬ trait of Pertuiset were the last large works that he did. It is a picture of the bar at the Folies-Bergere. In the center, back of the bar, stands a blond barmaid with an animally, vacant - eyed, placid face that shows none of the supposable villainies of her soul. Those we must supply. She herself looks stupidly bored, nothing more. The flesh and velvets are all she offers us. The intimate being is left for us to supply, and for my part she looks too stupid to bother with. I am much more interested in her reflection in the mirror behind her where she seems to be talking to a man who is FEMME NUE COUCHHE. PANNEAU (WOMAN RECLINING, PANEL) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Exposition d’Art Moderne. Paris, 1012.) —Collection Vollard. Paris BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 239 LA SEINE A ARGENTEUIL (THE RIVER SEINE AT ARGENTEUIL) By Claude Monet (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) evidently standing where we are as we look at the picture, for he only shows in this reflection. After all, it is not the human interest in this picture, but the wonderful spots of color in the odds and ends on the bar, and the figures in the room reflected in the mirrors that gave Manet the oppor¬ tunity to paint in full light the still-life that he so delighted in doing. Whichever way you turn the eyes of Renoir and Manet’s men, women and chil¬ dren glint at you, like two weird pin points of light. Renoir’s women cast sly and know¬ ing glances, while Manet’s are candidly, effrontedly alluring, just naturally im¬ moral. This light in the eye is almost a hallmark of Renoir’s work. It is almost a relief to get back to Cezanne’s “harsh and glaring ugliness, to his bright and discordant color, antagonis¬ tic to the accepted canons of beauty, yet opening avenues of vision and emotion pal¬ pitating with vivacity even if they lead only to precipices.” That sounds fine; here is some more. “Massive and well-bal¬ anced. He feels the empty spaces. Instan¬ taneous first impression of life. Cezanne’s great quality is his equilibrium.” (It seems to me his knife and apples have that quality rather than he.) The enthusiasm for Cezanne is like a disease or a new religion. It grows and grows until Cezannites see his influence in the whole world of painting and use him as a rule to measure all other work by. We will hear more of Cezanne in America during the next few years than we have as yet. The disease is spreading, but does not take with everyone. Some 240 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BE PONT D’ARGENTEUIL (THE BRIDGE AT ARGENTETJIL) (Exposition d’Art Moderne , Paris, 1912.) By Claude Monet BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 24 1 people, critics among them, still see red when they think of his work and speak of the shameful nullity of his can¬ vases, the hate and triviality with which he treats his nude. “His unformed nudities and savagely rustic portraits belong on the bargain coun¬ ter of a drygoods shop.” one man wrote last week. An¬ other said, “Cezanne could never have been a leader; the less said of him and his painting the better. He was quietly buried and passing into oblivion; this rapid ex¬ humation and exhibition of soulless remains reeks of the odors of commercial charla- tantry. Let us leave the noi¬ some thing to the resurrec¬ tionists and those hirelings who get what they can out of it; there is healthier work among the quick.” There seems but one thing to do about Cezanne’s work, and that is to form one’s own opinion, remembering that he worked out a means of expression which, though hinted at by many an artist before him, had never before been systematized. Many of his most appre¬ ciated elements were brought together in this exhibi¬ tion ; nine or ten landscapes that, to me, showed his understanding of construction, but also his fatality to leave it unaccomplished. His three portraits were of three widely different types of people; the one of himself was a good piece of realism, where the handling undeniably helped the uncanny character of the head. His flowers and any¬ thing but the still-life we have spoken of. There were eight of them, dating from the time when Manet's influence dominated, to the hour when his own som¬ ber azures and sad purples made them easily recogniz- DANSEUSE DANS SA LOGE (DANCER IN HER DRESSING ROOM) By Afft'od Degas (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) —Collection G. Viau. Paris DANS LA LOGE By Renoir (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) 2 4 2 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE PONT D’ARGENTEUIL, 18'!/ (THE BRIDGE AT ARGENTEUIL, 18V/) (Exposition d’Art Moderns, Paris, 1912.) By Claude Monet BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 243 able as coming from his pal¬ ette. There was one of his cele¬ brated Bathers. Many Amer¬ icans have had the opportun¬ ity of seeing this same pic¬ ture, I think, in the exhibi¬ tion that the Associations of American Painters and Sculptors sent to Chicago this year. I hope my own par¬ ticular friends did not get overexcited over the Cubists and Futurists in that exhibi¬ tion, but picked the good from the chaff, and spent some time at least in looking at the few pictures by the Master Impressionists, re¬ membering while they looked that they were looking at the real path-finders. Manet's Bull Fight, his Still Life, his two portraits, one of Mary Laurent, who played a part in the life of so many men of genius, were pictures that if approached in the right way, gave the key to much that i olio wed in the work of the true Master Impressionists just as Cezanne's eleven canvases gave the key to many of the crazy things in the other rooms. But all this is another story and will be taken up in the next article in this series. Turning our backs on Cezanne, we see for the first time a whole long wall filled with Claude Monet's. They seem strange¬ ly quiet and undisturbing after the Ce- zannes, Renoirs and Manets. It takes some time to adjust the eyes, to say nothing of the mental attitude, to the change. With the exception of an early picture of Claude Monet’s called Le dejeuner, loaned by the Modern Museum of Frankfort, Germany, and one portrait, all the pictures on this (PORTRAIT OF WOMAN. WITH FAN) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir wall were either land or seascapes. Le dejeuner represented his earliest work. It was painted in 1864, six years before broken color entered into his scheme of life or rather of paint. He had, not long before this Dejeuner was painted, seen an exhibition of Manet’s pictures. Up to that time Claude Monet had painted more or less influenced by Courbet and Corot. He was taken immediately by Manet’s bold, bright colors laid side by side without the usual accompaniment of conventional shadow, and appropriated this new tech¬ nique, applying it to landscape as well as to figures. The group of figures around a table covered with dishes was painted at this time. It was very soon after that that he almost entirely abandoned figure paint- 244 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PEUPLIERS. EFFET DE SOLEIL (POPLARS, EFFECT OF SUN) By Claude Monet ing. In the Portrait of a Woman the in¬ fluence of Courbet can still be felt, but Claude Monet’s finer and more sensitive eye shows itself in the harmony of the accessories which compose the decoration and complete the toilet of the woman. The creamy white shades, the odd piece of an old frame, a Japanese screen, the flowers on the carpet and divan cover, the red tie and the ribbon in her hair all speak of this. The light that later captured Claude Monet, body and soul, already commences to play a part in this interior, early work as it is. A beautiful picture way at the end of the line, Le pont d’Argenteuil, caught my at¬ tention. This little picture represented one of his first victories, although in the year it was painted (1874) no one was admit¬ ting that there were victories for Claude Monet or any of the other Impressionists. I do not know of anything in modern painting which is more charming, more re¬ poseful or more exquisite to the eye than these three Argentenils (there were three of them)— Argenteuil, Le pont d'Argen- teuil (1874) and Le bassin d’Argenteuil — limpid, silvered, blazing with verve. In these he not only shows what he owed to Corot, but added what he himself saw at Argenteuil that was new. The next step in Claude Monet’s career is shown in La falaise a Fecamp (1881), where he is drawing near to the Claude Monet that we know. This Falaise does not rank with his more brilliant things, but is remarkable for its suggestion of vast, domelike space, and, below it, of circling BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 245 waves, irresistibly drawn back, all froth¬ ing from the beach. About 1890 he commenced his sys¬ tematic painting of series. Most of us have seen at least one example of his first series, “The Haystack Series,” as it is called, for several of our museums have them and they are often on exhibition at the dealers. In this series of about twenty, he used haystacks in a field standing out boldly against the horizon, with the shadows sharply silhouetted on the ground, as a scaffolding for his effect. He took this same scene and painted it under the different hours of the day from dawn to twilight, in different keys as an air in music might be transposed from one key to an¬ other. The atmosphere is decomposed as to its elements and recomposed to obtain the general effect. There is a nearly per¬ fect rendition of the light qualities of each hour, but no reserve power. All is told in the first glance. After “The Haystack Series” came a se¬ ries of the facade of Rouen Cathedral called “The Cathedral Series.” Then fol¬ lowed “The P'oplars.” This last subject was suggested to him on one of his walks near his home at Giverny by a long and sinuous line of poplars, where in certain positions the trees were profiled one on the other. It struck him that here was a sub¬ ject to try his hand at. The picture we illustrate is one of this series. We have none of the “Morning Series on the Seine.” None was shown at this exhibition. From 1901 to 1904 Claude Monet made several visits to London, where he painted EFFET DE NEIGE, 189S (EFFECT OF SNOW, 189S) By Claude Monet 246 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS over a hundred pictures of the Thames. Waterloo Bridge, Bridge at Charing Cross, and the Houses of Par¬ liament are the titles of the series. All these pictures are so misty that at first the be¬ holder sees what seems to be a half-finished picture, but gradually as the eye pene¬ trates the prismatic fog, ob¬ jects begin to come out, one by one, just as they would emerge fro m the real fog. They seem more of a studio series than any of the other series up to this time. Un¬ doubtedly the original studies were all from nature, but the final result appears to have been arrived at in his studio. The Nympheas or Pond Lily Series were painted from a pond in the grounds of Claude Monet’s property at Giverny, where wonderful pond lilies and water plants are grown, surrounded by trees and crossed by a small BATHER SLEEPING By Pierre-Auguste Renoir DEUX FEMMES (TWO WOMEN) By AJSned Degas (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) —Collection Mile. Dieterle, Paris (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) Japanese bridge. The Vetheuil Series was painted in front of the village on the opposite side of the Seine. We may as well finish this series business and speak of his last, although it was not represented in this exhibition. The Venetian Series is the last I have seen. Several of them were shown in New York this year. In these he has gone even further than in The Thames and in the Pond Lily Series. He has “reached the last degree of abstraction and imagination allied with reality, of which the art of landscape is capable.” Each BY CHARLES LOUIS B 0 RG M EY ER 247 picture becomes a sort of experience where, for the satisfaction of the artist, are tried colored harmonies and fantasies. The architecture of the front of the palace has without doubt furnished the motive, but it plays a secondary role. Venetian Palaces are so filled with memories that they never have the appearance of the empty house. One feels the pulsa¬ tions even in the hours of silence. Now Claude Monet’s Venetian palaces are all empty to me, and so fail to give the feel¬ ing of the Venice I love. Had I the choice of anv one of his canvases I think I would take my little first love, Le pont d’Ar- gentcuil. Close to the Claude Monet pictures was the “Good Sisley's” offering. There were only four, and all of very happy, very smil¬ ing moods of nature; no flowers, no still- life. I think they might have done better than that for “poor Sisley.” But these four are gems in their way and perhaps give us as good a chance as many pictures would have done to see the lilac-colored tone that horrified Paris in the seventies. Port-Marly and Route de Versailles were painted in 1875, Promenade des Mar- ronniers in 1878, so these are pictures painted in the thick of the fight and prob¬ ably among those to actually receive the insults the public gave to the Impression- LES NYMPHBAS (THE WATER LILIES) By Claude Monet 248 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BAIGNEUSE (BATHER) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir ists at their exhibitions and sales of that time. Pissarro’s pictures were spread over his life a bit. Two of them, Pont-Neuf and Jardin des Tuileries, were painted only six or seven years before his death. Claude Monet uses nature as a bril¬ liant spectacle. The result he gets is more decorative than that of Sisley or Pissarro, who both had greater feeling of sympathy with nature than Claude Monet shows. Possi¬ bly Pissarro had this sym¬ pathy stronger than Sisley. Many feel that Pissarro has not reached the high place that belongs to him in the public mind and that he will, have his hour. If this is true, time will rectify the error, as it has a way of doing, and his solid work will lose noth¬ ing meantime. Degas’ pictures were scat¬ tered all over the place, on the walls and on easels, six¬ teen of them; all of them WINTER, VIEW IN BRITTANY By Pissarro (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) small, some even very small. In seeing so many of his things together in the midst of the Master Impressionists, one realizes that he is not one of them, that he in reality belongs to the time a little ahead of the Impressionists, to that of Manet and Whistler. He comes very near Ingres in the masterly sureness of his drawing, but more loose and pulsing. Degas really escapes definition and classification. His vigorous and free manner is nourished by tradition and still by comparison has noth¬ ing of tradition. He is a painter of impres¬ sions, but by comparison with the Impres¬ sionists, properly speaking, becomes the successor of the old masters. One needs to be in a plastic state of mind in the presence of his work and not search for equivalents BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 249 that do not exist. His color is not as bril¬ liant as that of either Manet or Claude Monet, but he has a more refined neutral color than either of them, in fact, than any of the Impressionists. It is only his color that he owes in part to them, and the fact that he puts on canvas or paper his im¬ pressions of his model. He did not even always paint in open air. Degas was fortunate in being repre¬ sented by works of his different periods. Among the early ones were little portraits, an admirable head of a young woman and a curious picture of a man with a high hat. In two race-course scenes the subtle grada¬ tions are as nervous and alive as the thor¬ oughbreds themselves. Then came examples of the suppleness and strength of the workmanship of the LITTLE GIRL IN THE BLUE ROOM By Mary Cassatt artist arrived at his maturity. Green-room scenes; a ballet girl with arm raised and a delicious picture with the windows in the background looking on Parisian roofs. Some Russian dancers brought Degas’ LE COURS-LA-REINE, ROUEN By Camille Pissarro 250 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE PLAGE DE TROUVILLE By Jean-Louis Forain VHOMME AU CHAPEAU By Alfr e d ' Degas (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) —Collection M. Beurdeley work up to date. There was a marvellous por¬ trait by him of Duranty, who was one of the first critics to espouse the cause of the Impressionists. It was a particularly happy touch to have M. Duranty seated in his library, shown among the pictures that he had been clairvoyant enough to discover virtue in. One could almost see “I told you so” written all over him. In regard to number, it was place aiix dames, for Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt each had more in number than any one man. Berthe Morisot’s were more varied than Mary Cassatt’s. There were several portraits of her little daughter; not as a baby, however, but as a child just passing from babyhood, and from babyhood to young girlhood. One even suggests young womanhood. This last was o f two w o m e n in light costumes seated side by side, one all timid and fresh, the other of maturer charms. There was a Venus va demander des armes a Vulcain that was a copy. Yes, but a copy from BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 25 1 CHILD IN BLUE By Mary Cassatt CHILD IN YELLOW CHILD AND DOG (Exposition d'Art Moclerne, Paris, 19H.) Boucher with Berthe Morisot’s own per¬ sonality peeping out from every line. From this copy to The Goose was a long step in subject at least. This last was a realization of her dream of a “light world adoat in an irradiation ; light trembling upon the shallows of artificial water, light turning the sum¬ mer trees to blue.” The white¬ ness of this goose appears and disappears in the trembling of the light. Duret in writing of Berthe Morisot in 1878 said, “The colors on her canvas assume a remarkable delicacy, soft¬ ness and velvet-like textures. The white holds reflected light which carries it to a sub¬ tle shade of tea-rose or ashen gray; the carmine passes in¬ sensibly into vermillion; the green of the foliage runs through the whole gamut of tones, from the palest to the most accentuated. The artist gives the finishing touch to her canvases by adding slight brush strokes here and there. It is as if she were shedding flowers.” About 1885 Berthe Morisot changed her palette and ac¬ centuated her colors. Moore says that she created a style, and has done so by investing her art with all her feminin¬ ity. Her art is no dull parody of man's; it is all woman¬ hood, sweet and gracious, ten¬ der and wistful womanhood. There seems not much left to be said after such praise as this by two such different men. Miss Cassatt’s pictures were of children, but of chil¬ dren of a more tender age, a little tot having her bonnet put on by her mother just before going out to play; two others dressed in their best little white dresses and shade hats seated very de¬ murely in big chairs waiting for Mother, THE WIDOWER By Jean-Louis Forain ■—Collection M. E. Moreau-Nelaton 252 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS L’INONDATION, 181/2 (THE INUNDATION IN 1812) By Alfred Sisley who is not yet quite ready. It is always Mother, never a nurse, who figures with Miss Cassatt’s children, even when she is not on the canvas one feels she is coming soon. They are distinctly Mother babies, no suggestion of Father even. Indeed, Father would be out of place in many of these dainty pastels and oils. Miss Cassatt seems to be one of the vic¬ tims that the Art Chronical speaks of feel¬ ingly: “The English public will never en¬ courage an artist or an author to work in more than one manner. If an artist de¬ sires fame as a painter of cats and dogs he must condemn himself to paint nothing but cats and dogs for the rest of his life. He must thoroughly ram it into the heads of a rather thick-skulled public that he can paint nothing but cats and dogs. And if he paints one cat with talent, he is expected to deal in cats until he can no longer hold a brush. After many days the public will cheerfully concede him a monopoly of the subject. They will not look at his specialty as rendered by any other artist. This is called ‘success.’ In England, versatility is sternly discouraged. It worries the critics and distracts the public. Perhaps Miss Cassatt is one doomed to paint babies. At any rate, she seems wedded to the line of her first success. It is said she is in the hands of a dealer, and if this is true, it might help to account for her sticking so closely to the same subject, the dealer naturally preferring a known and therefore saleable subject (according to the Art Chronical) to the risk of having something different. The ideal state would be for the true and sincere artist to be un¬ restricted, unlimited in any way. Miss BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 253 CONFIDENCES —Collection G. Viau, Paris By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) PORTRAIT DE FEMME (PORTRAIT OF WOMAN) By Edgar Degas LE CABARET DE REICHSHOFFEN (WAITRESS SERVING BEER) By Edouard Manet (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) DANSE USE LES POINTS By Edgar Degas (Exposition d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) 2 54 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS ADJOURNMENT OF COURT By Jean-Louis Forain Cassatt rarely exhibits in this country, but being a native of Pittsburgh, she makes an exception of that city. Speaking of restricting one to one sub¬ ject reminds me of a conversation T had with a very clever artist. He had been speaking of the versatility of a mutual friend and went on to say: “If the artist is to come into his own he must be free and unfettered, and develop his personality in his own way. He should seek expression in every possible medium. Art is one and universal, whether it is seen in drama, music, sculpture, painting, poetry or in architecture, when it is seen in its most sublime strength. The great artists of the world have not restricted themselves to one mode. Look at Raphael and Michel Angelo. Both were masters of more than a single art. It should be the normal devel¬ opment of the artist.” From Berthe Morisot and Miss Cassatt's adjoining corridorlike rooms, one took a few steps down and saw on the walls four¬ teen pictures by Raffaelli, and good ones. No one could call them story pictures, and still there was more interest in the actual subject than one usually finds among the Impressionist pictures. But then again Rafifaelli was no more an Impressionist than was Degas, but when they insist on including him in so important an Impres¬ sionist Exhibition as this one, we are bound to use the Impressionists as the basis of every comparison. And so in regard to the telling of a story in a picture. His pictures come nearer the danger point than any other in the exhibition. It was not until BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 5 5 the end of the eighteenth century that the story picture put in an appearance, and then it took like the grippe. We all know them “Yes or No?,” “Prodigal Sons,” etc., etc., where the subject is of supreme interest. Take The Doctor by Luke Fields. It seems to me out of the myriads who have seen it no one has thought of the color or the modeling, but solely of the subject. Would the child recover or not? In this it is pure¬ ly subject for subject's sake, and so has no enduring qualities. INGENUE ''Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir —Collection Alphonse Kann, Paris Passing on, we enter a little square room, filled with about sixteen sketches and paint¬ ings by Forain. At the present time Forain, the satirist, eclipses Forain, the artist. Like Degas he chooses his subjects from the green-room and its people, but from a different point of view. Both are ironic, but Degas stays apart from the life of the place. Forain enters into it. The oils he showed were of the kind that photo¬ graph well, due to the design probably. They were sad, nearly all of the misery, ugliness and of the low weaknesses of the ENFANT PORTANT DES FLEURS (CHILD CARRYING FLOWERS) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris. 1912.) poor. For the rich he shows no sympathy. Everyone knows Foraitrs work in the Paris papers, where he synthesizes in a decisive line, a brief, concise design like a phrase. PORTRAIT DE DURANTY By Edgar Degas (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) 256 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS They are brutal, ferocious, wholly French, but full of re- v o 1 t and hate against the ridiculous idiosyncrasies of these crazy times. In a way he and his conferes are the critics of the time, keeping their eyes open to the foibles of the world and calling at¬ tention to them. I was not fortunate enough to get photographs of Tou¬ louse-Lautrec's fourteen small sketches that had a room to themselves. Many of us know his colored poster for the Moulin-Rouge. There are those who prefer his pic¬ tures of the nocturnal world, his notes of public balls and music halls, to those by Degas. On all his work is en¬ graved the mournful sadness of the cynic. I was as tired as you are now after look¬ ing at these two hundred pictures, but in THE LAWYERS By Jean-Louis Forain -Collection M. Hessele looking back to the summer pleasures this exhibition marks one of the red-letter days. If I have been able to pass on one-tenth of the pleasure I experienced, I will be con¬ tent. AU CHAMP DE COURSES (ON THE RACE COURSE) By AJfml Depas (Exposition d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1912.) LE DfiJEUNER DES CANOTIERS (PLEASURE BOATERS AT LUNCH) By Pierre-Auguste Renoir LES COTEAUX DE LA BOUILLE, PRES DE ROUEN (THE HILLS OF THE BOUILLE, NEAR ROUEN) By Alfred Sisley —Collection Mme. Sisley-Diets The Master Impressionists [Chapter IX] By CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER A FTER reading the first articles in this series on the Master Impres¬ sionists, one might think that from 1870 to 1880 all artists were Impression¬ ists or followers of Impressionism. This is far from the truth, for there were as many divergences then as today, and they were just as difficult to classify and an¬ alyze. Without doing actual detective work, it would be utterly impossible to separate the many movements, for the reason that one mingles with the other to such an extent that there is no abrupt beginning or end. There have been movements galore; one torn every week, some only abortive and never reaching the dignity of being really named a movement, but each in its way working for the good of art in that prog¬ ress in art is healthy, while stagnation is unwholesome. It is the custom in art to march in massed battalions, to the bewil¬ derment of the onlooker when he tries to find out where the marchers are heading for, especially when the movement is in¬ volved in almost inpenetrable dust, i. e. claptrap. All this becomes even more bewildering when the change from one leader to another, from one school to a smaller division, swells these waves of dust into impregnable volumes. Each real move 260 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PORTRAIT D HENRI ROCHEFORT (PORTRAIT OF HENRI ROCHEFORT) By fidouard Manet ment in art is based on certain ideas formu¬ lated in the wake of some great artist whose aim has been to express himself. There are a few men with the courage of their convictions, who will couch the lance in the face of any opposition and ride home. Thank God for them ! But the great mass of men working in these movements are not skirmishers hut mere camp followers. They seek to make their name, not by indi¬ vidual effort, but by the method of the army sutler. For the comfort of the nations we can recall that each successive movement in art has, after all, been but short-lived; the many imitators who crowd around the standard of the pioneers soon fall back to oblivion or rally around some other stand¬ ard. Time is a wonderful standardize!'. Manet, Pissarro, Sisley, Claude Monet-, Renoir and Cezanne were the real thing in road breakers, but there were others in the seventies who were hacking their way through new territory. They were inspired by Millet and were sometimes called Piem¬ an Realists. They painted the peasant out of doors in his natural surroundings. Among the leaders in France were Jules Breton, Leon L'hermitte, Rosa Bonheur and Cazin. In Holland there were Joseph Israels, Artz, Neuhuys, Blommers, Mesdag, Mauve, the three Maris ( Ja¬ cobus, Mathys and Willem) and many smaller men. An¬ other movement was headed by Bastien-Lepage; and, as always, there were those in¬ fluenced by the Spaniards— Bonnat, Roybet, Carolus-Du- ran, etc. In England and Germany there were follow¬ ers of one or the other move¬ ment. But we are only interested, at the present time, in what directly developed from the teachings of the Master Impres¬ sionists. Mac Fall has a classification that seems illuminating to me. Manet’s teachings he speaks of as Mass-Impressionism. The step after that when those who are classed as Master Impressionists combined Mass- Impressionism with Broken Color and tried for higher utterance of the imagina¬ tion he calls Touch-Impressionism or Bro¬ ken-Color Impressionism. By 1880 the Mass and Broken-Color Im¬ pressionists had progressed in several di¬ rections ; one sanely, where it was carried forward through the years to the present time by such men as Besnard, Lebourg, Gaston La Touche, Carriere, Roll, Steinlen, BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 261 Le Sidaner, Henri Martin, Mile. Dufau, Rene Menard, Lucien Simon, Cottet, Aman-Jean, Levy-Dhurmer, Duhem, Vuil¬ lard, Maufra and many, many others. It was in France that the greatest develop¬ ment along these lines took place. The various ramifications lead down to the present day. Some by pure straight descent, others by devious ways. The Americans have not been far behind in fol¬ lowing the lead. Sargent founded his tech¬ nique on Mass-Impressionism. Childe Hassam, at one time almost the only ex¬ ponent in America of Impressionism, has now modified his art so as to barely leave a vestige to be seen, but the influence is there. J. Alden Weir, Twachtman, Chase, Childe Hassam, Ochtman, Alexander Har¬ rison, are a few of the many who have taken what pleased them from Impressionism. Our Canadian neighbor, Mor- rice. is of straight descent. To trace the direct relation¬ ship between the Master Im¬ pressionists and the pictures of their direct descendants hanging in the Luxembourg, as I hoped to do at first when I included some of their pic¬ tures among our illustrations in these articles, would, I find, take volumes, and so I am forced to leave you to do the tracing yourself, if you are sufficiently interested. Impressionism was a step in the natural evolution of the protest against academic for¬ mula and convention. But it was only a means, and not an end in itself. When it made its great discovery that the passing moment, impartially reproduced, was a sufficientl)/ aesthetic motive, it was at the end of its usefulness. It brought air and light into painting, but it offered too high a pre¬ mium to skill of hand, to the technical dexterities which are the particular busi¬ ness of the artist, but do not add to the human appeal of the art. It is claimed that this very narrowness of aim was itself the cause of the end of Impressionism. Out of all this study of decomposition of color, di¬ vision of tone and science of complemen- taries, came a time when the whole atten¬ tion was given to “tricks of the thumb.” The Master Impressionists’ touches of pure color were irregular, their size and shape were guided entirely by the feeling of the artist. Out of this grew an abuse which led to rules and regulations and reduced painting to the scientific placing of round regular spots. This movement was dig- FEMMES DANS UN JARDIN (WOMEN IN A GARDEN) By Claude Monet -—Collection Claude Monet BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 263 LES COTEAUX DE MORET (THE HILLS OF MORET) By Alfred Sisley nified by a real name, two of them in fact, Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism. Their idea of using tiny spots was that each spot, each point reflected the light and added a vibrating color greater than could be reflected from broad masses on the can¬ vas. The theory was fine, but like all theories, only applicable now and then to a limited class of subjects. With its use grew its abuse, until the theory was pushed almost to caricature. They became so occupied with the rules that all liberty, all au¬ dacity was lost. They were called by the profane, “The Confetti School.” Claude Monet and Pissarro are often acclaimed as the heads of this school, but neither one is will¬ ing to accept the responsibil¬ ity. There is a letter from Pissarro in which he says: “I wish it thoroughly under¬ stood that it is M. Seurat who has been the first to conceive the idea of applying the scien¬ tific theory, etc.” This Paul Seurat that Pissarro speaks of was twenty years younger than Claude Monet. He was sufficiently the true artist to get out of Pointillism, or rather in spite of Pointillism he achieved some good at¬ mospheric luminous effects. The Luxembourg has three pictures by him, one recently acquired by purchase — Le Chateau des Papes. Signac was perhaps the best of them all, for he did occasionally see the mood above the craftsmanship. He and Seurat exhibited during the eighties when they showed what they and their small group of followers (Luce, Augard, Cross, several Belgians, Laurent, etc.) were able to do in scien¬ tific painting. Among other pictures were ten of yachts, all in profile, all in full sail, all painted in little dots. Five of them were painted by Signac and five by Pis¬ sarro. It was only by the closest study and an intimate knowledge of Pissarro’s touch LORDS DE RIVIERE (THE SHORES OF THE RIVER) By Alfred Sisley —Collection Mme. Sisley-Diets 264 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS that Moore was able to tell which was which. That was what painting by rule led to. They proved that “science was death to personality.” These followers in the footsteps of the Master Impressionists had, after all, little to say that was new. They brought rules into the game and the result was a belit¬ tling of life. They created no great mas¬ terpieces. They uttered no great emotions, just trivial moods. The followers of Point¬ illism rapidily deserted and Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism and its Italian sister- ism, Divisionism, became classed among the “has been” movements. Some few of its adherents remained scientists. Some went back to Manet and started all over again on a new line, where synthesis was the goal. Cezanne was of these. I have talked a great deal about Ce¬ zanne in these articles, but do not know that at any time have I suggested that he was not in perfect accord with the Impression¬ ists, or that his standpoint was different from theirs. In their meetings at the Cafe Guerbois he often grew dissatisfied with himself, feeling that he was wandering too far from the principles of the greatest art of the past, and when they argued that painting had not as yet been born, he would disagree with them and wander off to the Louvre by himself, where he would BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 2 6 5 strengthen his faith in the men whose work seemed imperishable to him. He was of the Master Impressionists only during a transitory period. About 1873, when he was working with Pissarro out of doors, he commenced to develop a range of color that was strong, unexpected and absolutely original. By 1877 he was Cezanne and no one else, a Cezanne who was regarded with horror by the public. In 1879, after having endured every in¬ dignity that the public could throw upon him, he left Paris, unhappy, discouraged, feeling that the more he understood the less was he understood even by his friends. Among these friends who ranked him as master were Pissarro, Claude Monet, Re¬ noir and Guillaumin. Just about this time, when it seemed as if the whole art world had gone over to the masters who worshipped light, when the clever graduation of colors, influenced by light, was taught in all the academies, and light was the principal personage in each picture, there arose a certain reac¬ tion, an agitation below the surface. Cezanne is always spoken of as one of the three who were the leaders in this move¬ ment that has recently been called Post Impressionism. It is certain that Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, the other two, owe much to him, although Cezanne said of Gauguin that he misunderstood him and travestied his thought. Gauguin was a friend of Pissarro and Guillaumin, a pupil of theirs in a way, as he painted with them LES COQTJELICOTS; GIVERNY. 1885 By Claude Monet 266 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS LE LISEUR, PORTRAIT DU PEINTRE GALL (THE READER, PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER GALL) By Edouard Manet Sundays. He was the son of a Breton father and a Peruvian Creole mother. He was nearly twenty years younger than Pis¬ sarro, possibly ten or twelve years younger than Guillaumin. At first he followed Pis¬ sarro into Pointillism, but forsook that method to go back to Manet. He was on the stock exchange up to the time he was about thirty-six, when, due to some public praise given his work exhibited with the BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 67 CRYSTAL PALACE, LONDON. 1871 By Camille Pissarro Impressionists, he left that life and de¬ voted himself to painting. From then on trouble started. He went from place to place, dropping- a little of his small fortune at each move, until, as Faure says, '‘He was compelled to abandon his familv while he pursued desperately the chimera of his youth.” In 1886 he went to Brittany and painted peasants as big elemental types; then he and a few choice spirits (Laval, Moret and Paul Serusier), having read of the scanti¬ ness of the costumes and the delicious fruits to be had for the asking at Mar¬ tinique, Conceived the idea that their cost of living might be reduced by going there to live. But the terrible heat soon sent them back to Paris, where only by the sale of a few of his Martinique pictures was Gauguin saved from starvation. One thing that Martinique did for him was to fill his senses with color, just as it does to every visitor today. All this time he was still under the in- L'ALGBRIENNE (THE ALGERIAN WOMAN) By Pierre-Aupuste Renoir 268 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BY CHARLES LOUIS B O R G M EY ER 269 VUE DE ROUEN, 1883 (VIEW OF ROUEN, 18SS) By Camillp Pissarro fluence of Cezanne and Manet. He even copied Manet’s Olympia in 1888. During this time he had made the acquaintance of Van Gogh, who invited him to visit him at Arles. The visit was a fiasco, though he de¬ veloped there peculiar color faculties that marked his next development. Van Gogh tried to kill him at a tavern one night with a razor and then went home and as a pen¬ ance cut off his own ear at the root. It is only fair to say here that this happened near the end of Van Gogh’s life, when he was already suffering from the effects of the sunstroke that he had had while paint¬ ing not long before. They seem a crazy lot to the normal man; living the life of fifty men in intensity seems to have its draw¬ backs. Gauguin sent a doctor to Van Gogh and shook the dust of Arles from his shoes as quickly as possible. From Arles he went to Pont Aven. At Martinique he had found himself unable to render the thousand and one shades of the fierce sun. It was a task beyond him. Going to Pont Aven, the con¬ trast between the somber grandeur of its scenery and the fierce sun rays of Mar¬ tinique “gave him furiously to think.” He had tried the methods of the Impression¬ ists, and found them inadequate. He felt and said that “Every one of the Impres¬ sionists examines the exact shade that is before his eyes and then matches it with the color on his palette and applies it to his canvas. But who can say that this color is the true color of that one minute? Even the artist himself has forgotten. All that mass of exact colors is lifeless, frozen. He 270 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS BE JAS DE BOUFFAU By Paul Cezanne lies stupidly, etc.” Thus he tore down the teachings of the Impressionists. He gradually worked out rules for him¬ self and talked them to all who would listen. “Simplify, paint from memory, so that your work may be your own sensation, so only can decorative unity and harmonious ac¬ cord he created. Rapid and ephemeral ef¬ fects should not be looked for, but rather the great calm of nature. Every one of your figures should be in the static state. The greatness of the masters of art does not consist in the absence of faults. To know how to draw is not to draw well.” In regard to this last, be it understood that Gauguin took great pains with his drawing. It was often volun¬ tarily false, for he often sacrificed material truths for efifect. Even in Brittany, where most artists see only gray harmonies, Gauguin drew from his imagination landscapes of green, yellow and red that never existed ex¬ cept in his dreams. His colors are not those of nature, but of his sensations. During the time Gauguin spent at Pont Aven many a young painter came there— men following Impressionist teachings, but who grew rest¬ less under the fire of Gau¬ guin’s talk. “He urged them to use only indigo, yellow and red; to avoid black or gray, since nothing is black, noth¬ ing is gray; to have a model, but never to paint from it, al¬ ways painting from memory; never to see contrast of col¬ ors, but harmonies; to paint from light to dark, not from dark to light; only to paint repose, always to use an outline; never finish; never use details; to paint by instinct, not by theory; never to use broken color.” Gauguin’s con¬ stant care was for the decorative and musical effects. He thought with Walter Pater that music should be the goal for every artist. Music -—Collection Vollard THE MOUNTAIN, SAINT VICTOIRE By Paul Cezanne —Collection Vollard. BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 27 1 PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S FATHER By Paul Cezanne —Collection Pellerin for the eye; that was Gauguin’s objective. Lmile Bernard walked to Pont Aven, and I can assure you that it is some walk. I think the fare from Paris with a sleeper costs something like twenty-five dollars. Gauguin refused him as a pupil, “fearing the Paris taint in him.” Later on he ac¬ cepted him through friendly intervention. Paul Serusier, who accompanied him to Martinique, went to see his work at Pont Aven, but did not like it, and returned to Paris, where suddenly he became bored by conventional picture making and forthwith started a revolt at Juliens itself. Pont Aven became fashionable and the group escaped to Pouldu, where others joined them. About this time they looked to religion for subjects and clothed them¬ selves in the suits and red coats of stage brigands for excitement. They all hated Claude Monet's teachings. Their aim was to go back to the “innocence, the credulity” of the art of very early people. In other words, to return to savage primitivism. Gauguin not only wanted to take painting back, but wished to go himself. He longed for solitude; he dreamed of some faraway land where in the infinite solitude nothing broke the silence and where ardent, vibrat¬ ing sun’s rays, broken into a thousand colors, were in contrast with large and vir¬ gin forests, where the air was perfumed by the effluvia of luxuriant plants, where the torrid heat made the perfume of the orange trees fill the air. He read of Tahiti, his mind filled with pictures of its marvel¬ lous color. Tahiti was the place for him, and to Tahiti he must go. In 1891 a benefit was given for him at the Vaudeville, where his pictures were shown and Maeterlinck’s “L’lntruse” was played for the first time. Money enough SELF PORTRAIT —Collection Pellerin By Paul Cezanne AUTOPSY —Collection Pellerin By Paul Cezanne THE CARD PLAYERS By Paul Cezanne —Collection Pellerin BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 273 VILLAGE ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER By Paul Cezanne was raised to send him to Tahiti. He stayed in Tahiti about two years. His prose poem “Noa-Noa,” written there, tells of his life. Outside of the interest of the love episodes, which surely would be censored by most Americans, there is a delightful humanness about his experiences. During the time he was at Tahiti he painted besides many other pictures, one that is among our illustrations —Adam and Eve. In looking at this pic¬ ture we are supposed to see the South Sea Island as it looks and feels to a native savage. Gauguin went back to Paris with great hopes that his world would see the truths that he thought the savage had taught him. But he only bored his friends by his talk and the public had grown to see as the Impressionists saw and they were not ready for a change. So disappointed and unhappv was he that Car- 1 1 - THE PLAIN AT AIA riere paid his way back to By Paul Cezanne Tahiti, where what had aroused his enthusiasm in the past only bored him. He lost faith in himself, grew bitter, left Tahiti for the Dominican Island, where through some difference with the authorities he was sentenced to three m onth s’ imprisonment and died in 1903. On one of his pictures that we illustrate, volumes have been written, The IV ay side Christ. It has been laughed at, it has been prayed to. It affects some to tears of sor¬ row, others to tears of laugh¬ ter. One could never imag¬ ine on locking at this, that Gauguin was a superb drafts¬ man. It is hard to believe that he was deliberately clumsy and awkward in his execution, but he was. His Wayside Christ is a picture of a bold, strong landscape where peasants, women and children, without suggesting any spe¬ cial piety, kneel around the central figure, Christ on the Crucifix. There is a flowing 274 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS By Paul Cezanne of grotesque sensations in the wooden fig¬ ure ; the pathos of the pitying look he casts upon these poor unthinking people and the mystical realism are increased by the awk¬ wardness of the execution. The Vincent Van Gogh I spoke of some time back as having tried to kill Gauguin had his full share in the development of this baclc-to-the-simple-life movement. He was born at Groot Zundert, Holland, in 1853, the son of a Dutch clergyman. Until he was thirty he seemed to wander from pillar to post, unsettled, unsatisfied. He was a clerk at Goupils’ different houses in London, Paris and the Hague. He passed from school teaching in England to preaching in Amsterdam and Brussels; then back to Holland, where he consulted his cousin's husband, Anton Mauve, as to what next, who suggested his own studio. All this time he had been in a more or less artistic atmosphere, and he jumped at this chance to study art. Again “temperament” interfered and he parted with Mauve to fall back upon his brother. From Mauve’s studio Van Gogh went to the Academy at Antwerp, This was about 1885, The next year found him in Paris, where he went to study under Cormon with Pmile Bernard. He met Gauguin and was greatly influenced by him. He fell in turn under the spells of Broken-Color Impres¬ sionism and Pointillism. The former left its impression on his color development, the latter he soon abandoned. He, like Ce¬ zanne, was always hampered by having en- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 275 THE BATHERS By Paul Cezanne tered into the craftmanship of painting late in life, but unlike Cezanne he gloated over the fact of not having studied at any school but Nature's. He said, “When I think of what one might call ‘the technique crew/ how tedious they all are! Na¬ ture is my master. I have learned to paint through my failures. I believe that in studios one learns next to nothing about painting and certainly nothing about life. I regret that there is no Academy where one can learn to draw or to paint a man digging or sowing seed. I should despair if my figures were always correct; if you take a photograph of a man digging, he is sure to look as if he were not 'digging. The anatomy and structure of the body will not always seem correct to the eye of the Academician. But it will have life.” Van Gogh soon left Paris, taking Gauguin with him, to live at Arles. Here he worked like mad, three-fifths of his pictures being painted during the two years he was there, 1887, 1888. He painted hun¬ dreds and they are his mas¬ terpieces. Life went swiftly with Van Gogh. He writes: “In painting I observe no sys¬ tem ; I lash the canvas with irregular strokes and let them stand,” and looking at his swirling, swinging stroke with its astonishing sense of move¬ ment, one can well believe he tells the truth. His vitality, his fury, his crude genius, his contempt for mere accomplishment, his search for the signifi¬ cance of his sensations, shocks us and then when one reads his letters and sees him revealed as a quiet, self-contained, sin¬ gularly lovable man, full of determina¬ tion, yet gentle rather than rough, shrewd LED A —Collection Pellerin By Paul Cezanne 276 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS WOMAN AND CHILD By Paul Cezanne in judgment, devoted whole-heartedly to his art, out-spoken but never speaking unkindly of other painters, never com¬ plaining, but showing a trace of the ego¬ tism which is associated with unbalanced minds, one is inclined to agree with his friends that the insan¬ ity that developed at this time was due to the sunstroke that he suffered while painting in a field. It is said that when he received the sunstroke he was sitting bareheaded in the hot sun, painting five canvases at a time. He must have been crazy to have done it, but after all there is little differ¬ ence between genius and in¬ sanity and Van Gogh’s friends all proclaim his genius. It was after this sunstroke that he cut off his own ear in sorrow for his “unkindness” ~ . T , , THE FIELDS to Gauguin. He became wor- By Vincent van ried at his condition and went of his own accord to stay at an asylum where he painted a number of pictures, among others his own portrait. I would as soon have an insane man occupying a guest cham¬ ber in my house as to have this portrait hanging near me in my everyday life, all of which goes to show that it is “living” at least. The al¬ most intolerable intensity of it, the direct elemental treat¬ ment of the stubby red hair, the rough flesh, the deep green eyes, make one shudder when looking at this horrible picture of a man with insan¬ ity in his eye, and all the marks of a criminal in his physiognomy. He was in the asylum for six months when he went to Paris to consult a friend about himself, a Dr. Gachet, as the fear that he might be¬ come an idiot was preying upon his mind. Soon after this he shot himself. Dr. Gachet found him after the shot was fired. Gogh BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 2 7 7 SUNFLOWERS By Vincent Van Gogh —Collection Herr Paul von Mendelsohn-Bartholdy WOMEN OF TAHITI By Paul Gauguin FATHER TANGUY By Vincent Van Gogh A SEAMAN’S MOTHER By Vincent Van Gogh 278 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS MARINE By Maxime Maufra —Courtesy of the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts His only answer to the question “Why?” was a shrug of the shoulders. The story is that for the next twenty-four hours he and Dr. Gachet smoked and discussed art, until he quietly passed away. The following i s taken from Meier- Graefe’s work on Modern Art: “This Hol¬ lander, who did not begin to paint until he was thirty and was dead by his own hand at thirty-seven, who stampeded through his art education, was the real Father of the present movement in modern art. Of him it may be said, as ’twas said of Delacroix— ‘He bore the sun in his head and a hurri¬ cane in his heart. * * * He tormented his canvases. * * * He worked at fever- point, panting and gasping. * * * His elemental craving for self-expression was a mania. He did not go to Nature; she dragged him to her. * * * He did not paint with hands, but with naked senses. * * * Every picture he painted was holy ecstasy, even when the theme was a bunch of lettuces. * * * It depressed him to think that life is created with less effort than art.’ ” It may not be easy to see things from Van Gogh’s point of view, but it certainly is interesting to see that point of view stated as it is in his self-revealing letters written to his brother and firnile Bernard during the years 1887-1890. I am sorry not to have the space to quote from them freely. His references to color are most interesting. He writes, “I think in color.” “ ‘The painter of the future will have to be a colorist such as has never yet been seen.’ ” Some of his color dreams as he describes them are nightmares or poems, as you yourself decide. Here is one: “I will sim¬ ply paint my bedroom. By means of its simplicity it shall suggest absolute peace BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 279 and slumber to the spectator. The walls are pale violet, the floor is covered with red tiles; the wood of the bed and the chairs is a warm yellow; the sheets and the pillow are a light yellow green; the quilt is scar¬ let, the window green, the washstand i s orange, the washbasin blue, and the doors are mauve. That is all—there is nothing more in the room.” Nor on the palette, I fear. Far from suggesting absolute slum¬ ber, the slumber it suggests to me seems haunted by nightmare. It is impossible to read these letters with¬ out realizing that with his extraordinary abilities Van Gogh might easily have had a cheap success in his life, and have inher¬ ited fame rather than obscurity and pov¬ erty. Two years ago in London he was reviled and laughed at when his pictures were shown at the Grafton Galleries. His work was called an insult to the British intelli¬ gence. He was proclaimed “a madman, decadent, absinthe fiend, joker, pavement- artist, anarchist, contemptuous of all tra¬ dition and authority,” and so on, and so on. Van Gogh is not the greatest painter since the old masters, but he is certainly a most interesting one. Many give to him. more than to Cezanne and Gauguin, the blame or praise (just as you please) for the modern movement in art. Probably the truth is as I read the other day, that he was a man of genius, a thinker and a per¬ former, with an immense deal to say, who chose to say it in his own way. “He boiled his own kettle and he scalded himself in the pouring out.” TRANSPORT VESSELS LEAVING HAVRE By Maxime Man fra —Courtesy Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo 280 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS HOUSE AT VANDREUIL By Gustave Loiseau ■—Courtesy Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo It was only two years ago that the actual name of Post-Impressionist was given to the movement of which Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh are the sponsors. There was held at that time in London an exhibi¬ tion of their work with that of Henri Ma¬ tisse, leader of the contemporary m ove- ment. This London exhibition w a s fol¬ lowed by another this year, and so soon has the eye accustomed itself to new ways of seeing that this exhibition looks less sensational than the last, almost to the point where the conventions of Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh seem positively simple, especially in comparison with what has been sprung upon the public very re¬ cently by their offspring. Pages and pages have been written, days and nights have been consumed in discussions over what the. Post-Impressionists are trying to do. We have not the time today to even men¬ tion the names of those who are in the Post-Impressionist wagon. They have gone many steps beyond the Impressionists in their worship of the per¬ sonality of the artist. They say it matters not how things look, the one and only thing is your sensation upon seeing them. Now we come to a stage in art that is puzzling many a better man than I ever hope to be. I am at a loss just how to tackle the subject, for it will surely be a case of the blind leading the blind. Ce¬ zanne's synthesis and Van Gogh s, I can follow with interest and patience; after that I lose my temper. Gauguin’s step back to the art utterance of the savage I can un- BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 281 derstand in him, and, truth to tell, walk with him to a cer¬ tain extent, but this going back to recapture the “inno¬ cence of the eyes of child¬ hood,’’ to paint things as a child, seems to me as much of an affectation, or lie, as any mimicry of classic art would be. Personally the “New Spirit” seems very much like the Old Spirit of Commercial¬ ism. I have tried in these articles to state the aspirations of the Master Impressionists as fair¬ ly as it was in my power to do, so now in order to do equal justice to their follow¬ ers I think I had better gather together what others have said. It will be difficult to place the quotation marks in the right places, as much of what I have read has stayed in my memory without being labeled by the writers' names. My apologies to anyone from whom I have stolen thoughts. The creed of the modern movement (Post-Impressionism)—and I can but think STREET AND TREES By Vincent Van Gogh RAIN EFFECT By Vincent Van Gogl that they wink the other eye as they recite it—is something as follows: “What you call beauty is merely a convention ; we open new avenues of expression, infinitely more significant than mere beauty ; we eliminate the unessential; we give the salient effects of life, not the facts; what you cal! our ugliness is merely revealed beauty in an¬ other form. We are vital, we are alive. We stimulate.” “In choice of subject we recognize no authority but the truth that is in them. In choice of form, none but the need of expressing it.” “ We paint the emotions, the sensations that the object arouses, never the imitation of the object. We care little for accuracy. We approach each fresh canvas as if there was no past art.” The only suggestion that I can make to those who would place themselves en rapport with these men and find they cannot is to try and visualize some face. I am told if one is ADAM AND EVE, TAHITI By Paul Gauguin THE WAYSIDE CHRIST By Paul Gauguin have emptied out of painting much mean¬ ingless matter and that possibly out of their violence and extravagance may arise the next really formative and constitutional movement, but as yet it is only a big idea that has no one big enough to express it, certainly not Matisse. No one seems to doubt that Seurat and Signac of Pointillist fame or that Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, the originators of the Post-Impressionists, were sincere. At any rate they gave their lives to their fanatical beliefs. Some doubt might, with a poor “visualizer” the image will be very like some of the pictures by Matisse. I have tried to cite some of their aims. I am afraid to write what has been said against these pictures by Matisse and his followers, for I understand the censorship is strict in Chicago where the Fine Arts Journal is published. String together every bad adjective you can think of and apply them and perhaps you can get some idea of what has been said against them. The consensus of opinion seems to be that they SELF PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST By Paul Gauguin BY CHARLES LOUIS BORG MEYER 283 reason, be cast on the present day follow¬ ers. I am told that when Matisse buys a picture, old or modern, he buys very much what you or I might choose. Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh painted for themselves. They often left their can¬ vases in the field, or tossed them into the corner of their studios, but these men, can one imagine them hiding their light under a bushel or not exhibiting at every opportun¬ ity their pompous crudities? Only two years ago Cezanne dethroned SELF PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST (WITH PIPE, By Vincent Van Gogh Manet, Claude Monet, Degas, Pissarro and Sisley in public favor. Then his sover¬ eignty fell to Gauguin and Van Gogh, who tried to lead back painting and life to sav¬ age primitivism. Now they take a back seat, for Matisse, Picasso, Picabia, Van Dongen, and other exponents of ugliness, if not indecencies. The aims of this new “ism” read as well as those of Impression¬ ism and Post-Impressionism. Picasso is at the head of the Cubists and I suppose has a perfect right to make his experiments, but to ask us to accept the pictures seri- MAN WITH BACHELOR’S BUTTON By Vincent Van Gogh MAN WITH RED HAIR By Vincent Van Gogh 284 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS PAPAETE —Collection Henri Rouurt By Paul Gauguin ously is almost too much. New York has been stirred by the exhibition of these par¬ ticular pictures very m u c h as the circus stirs it. The agitation was not on quite as high a plane as one of the big football games gives, but it was noticeable! “Ingres showed the material substance of his be¬ ings (the thickness, length and breadth) with his vulgar round modeling; then came Manet with his Hat modeling, the thickness suggested by the justly stated color and tone relations of the various planes; and now come the Cubists trying to create this illusion, what they call the third dimension, with cubes and angles.” It is only after wading through a great deal of talk on the subject that the above little paragraph came to enlighten me. I said to myself, now I know what they use geometrical, cubical symbols for. But do I? Does any one else? What is the mat¬ ter with curves? All my life I have heard the curves of the human body are the mcst beautiful in all nature. Is it true that ‘‘Not to be natural is the new law”? Pablo Picasso is the prophet of this new symbolism. A French paper describes what his “art” will lead to. “His art is so subjective that with a few lines straggling across a canvas he is able to express, to himself at any rate, anything in nature, or cut of it. They say: Why not? Black spots with strange tails ranged on and between, below and above five straight lines convey all the glories of music to the brain of the deaf musician. Their object is not to suggest certain emotions, but rather to express the actual emotion itself as it was passionately con¬ ceived by the artist; just as the highest music expresses the emotion of the com¬ poser, and expresses the same emotion to BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 285 SPANISH WOMAN By Henri Matisse the audience, whereas a lower kind of music is imitative, needing interpretation, commentary and programme. And then they label their pictures! Explain them by titles!! Also do they cling to the visi¬ ble adornment of a picture frame!!! Next on the list of—shall we sav freaks? —is Franqois Picabia. I feel like agreeing with Arthur Hoeber when he says he has “unadulterated cheek” and with John Sar¬ gent that “neither Picasso’s nor Picabia’s pictures have any claim whatever to being works of art.” It sounds such rot to say that the pictures they make, mirror no ob¬ jects whatever; that the mood rendered plastic is what they aim to express; that there should be no perspective in art. But “to heave a brick at Cubism” is only to advertise it; if there is anything in it, it will live. Picabia accuses the Italian Futurists of having stolen the thunder of the Cubists, and exaggerating their ideas. In 1910, from a theatre stage in Turin was hurled some of the ravings of the Futurists. “Burn all the pictures of the past. Tear down Saint Marks at Venice. Turn Venice into a city of factories. Destroy the quattro¬ cento palaces. Build sublime factory chim¬ neys.” The chief aim of the Futurist is the glor¬ ification of movement and the representa¬ tion of states of mind, especially of “tumul¬ tuous emotion.” This is achieved by a com- fiTUDE DE FEMME ; DESSIN (STUDY OF WOMAN; DRAWING) -—Courtesy Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais By Henri Matisse 286 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS THE WOMAN WITH THE GREEN EYES By Henri Matisse THE SMOKER By Vincent Van Gogh STUDY By Henri Matisse SELF PORTRAIT —Collection Mine. Gosshalk Berger By Vincent Van Gogh BY CHARLES LOUIS BORGMEYER 2%7 THE OLD PEASANT ay Vincent Van Gogh bination of circles, angles and triangles. They say, “We are no longer satisfied with form and color; what we wish to produce on canvas will no longer be one fixed in¬ stant of universal dynamism ; it will simply be dynamic sensation itself. Everything is movement, transformation. A profile is never motionless, but constantly varying. Objects in movement multiply themselves, become deformed in pursuing each other. For instance, a runaway horse has not four legs, but twenty.” So they paint the twenty legs, or if it is a girl dancing they repeat the girl in parts of her until it gives one the jimjams. Movement is better expressed by any kinematograph than by the Futur¬ ist painters. Here is another outpouring of their souls. I ought not to give it space, but it is funny: “A picture must be the synthesis of what one remembers, and of what one sees. Hence our bodies inter¬ penetrate the sofas we sit on, and the sofas inter-penetrate us. The motor-bus dashes into the houses, and the houses in their turn precipitate themselves into the motor-buses. It follows that the right shoulder or right ear of a man having been painted in a pic¬ ture, it is totally idle and useless to paint also the left ear and the left shoulder. Sim¬ ilarly, we do not paint sounds, but only the vibrating intervals between sounds.” All new art forced to assert itself ap¬ pears to us as extreme, but even if it is ex¬ treme it may be sincere and if sincere it may remain and develop in the direction of moderation. When, however, it is con- sciouslv and insolently insincere, as in the case of the Italian Futurists, it will, in its own good time, disappear and will, let us hope, never be heard from again. We have brought these ists and isms up to date, with the exception of a few that are on the wane, unless one has been born overnight. Perhaps today some model has left an artist with his picture half finished, insulted at the angles he sees in her curves and he to make peace, may turn all the ugly angles into circles and thus, created tonight, may be born a new movement of Roundists. SELF PORTRAIT By Vincent Van Gogh 288 THE MASTER IMPRESSIONISTS Some of these movements have sprung from smaller openings than this. Possibly as an end to these talks on the Master Impressionists and those who fol¬ lowed them, it might be of use to give a tabulated statement that is often used to show what their aims were. This may be confusing in a way, as to tabulate anything connected with art demands as many ex¬ ceptions as there are in the rules of French grammar. Orthodox art in painting: the imitation of things. Impressionism : painting the e ff e c t of things; concentration on atmosphere. Post-Impressionism: painting the psycho¬ logical feeling or sensation of things. Cubism: painting of forms lineally in planes; concentration on form. Futurism: painting of “states of mind" and glorification of movement. STILL-LIFE, FLOWERS AND FRUIT By Paul Gauguin GETTY CENTER IJBRARY