Category Archives: Art

Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Carpet Merchant (1887)

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In July of 1798, Napoleon marched into Egypt and defeat­ed the Turks at the Bat­tle of the Pyra­mids, weak­en­ing past break­ing point the wan­ing Ottoman Empire. He was dri­ven out a year lat­er by the British, but in that small amount of time he had already changed every­thing: because fol­low­ing him came first a trick­le and then a tor­rent of west­ern­ers into the Near and Mid­dle East. They came and they jour­neyed through Turkey, Iraq, Per­sia, Egypt, Lebanon, Pales­tine, Ara­bia and North Africa. Many of them wrote about their expe­ri­ences, spark­ing a deep fas­ci­na­tion with these exot­ic, mys­te­ri­ous lands.

The artists came too, and they paint­ed what they saw: bazaars and souks; robed and mous­ta­chioed Arabs smok­ing hookah pipes; mosques and minarets; Turk­ish baths and harems. With time this became an art move­ment and today we call it Ori­en­tal­ist art. I love it for the way it con­jures up the exot­ic, and although it is clear that some artists let their imag­i­na­tions get the bet­ter of them (I’m think­ing of the harems, which no artist can have actu­al­ly seen), their depic­tions of these lands must have inspired many a beat­ing heart to vis­it.

One such Ori­en­tal­ist was French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1856, he vis­it­ed Egypt for the first time and fol­lowed the clas­sic grand tour of a typ­i­cal occi­den­tal vis­i­tor to the Ori­ent: up the Nile to Cairo, then to Abu Sim­bel, across the Sinai Penin­su­la and through the Wadi el-Ara­ba to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and final­ly to Dam­as­cus. He gath­ered themes, arte­facts and cos­tumes for his ori­en­tal scenes, and then set to work, soon estab­lish­ing a rep­u­ta­tion back home which saw him become hon­orary Pres­i­dent of the French Soci­ety of Ori­en­tal­ist Painters.

There’s a gallery, below, of sev­er­al of his Ori­en­tal­ist works, giv­ing a good flavour of what he was about, and below that my favourite piece of the lot, The Car­pet Mer­chant. I have trav­elled quite exten­sive­ly myself in these lands, from Istan­bul, Beirut and Dam­as­cus to Mar­rakesh, Petra and Cairo; and noth­ing quite beats the sim­ple plea­sure of wan­der­ing the snaking alley­ways and souks of an old quar­ter, and tak­ing in the sights, sounds and smells of life there. The Car­pet Mer­chant cap­tures that feel­ing per­fect­ly.

The Carpet Merchant
The Car­pet Mer­chant

 

Art

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1884)

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One of my favourite artists is John Singer Sar­gent, the great Edwar­dian-era por­trait painter. Born in Flo­rence to Amer­i­can par­ents, he lived an itin­er­ant ear­ly life in Europe, his par­ents mov­ing reg­u­lar­ly between sea and moun­tain resorts in France, Ger­many, Italy, and Switzer­land (alright for some). Sargent’s ear­ly signs of artis­tic tal­ent led the fam­i­ly to Paris where he gained admis­sion to the École des Beaux-Arts and stud­ied with the not­ed French por­traitist, Car­o­lus-Duran.

In 1879, at the age of 23, Sar­gent paint­ed a por­trait of Car­o­lus-Duran and exhib­it­ed it at the Paris Salon. It met with such pub­lic approval that his future direc­tion was sealed. He quick­ly accu­mu­lat­ed com­mis­sions for por­traits and his fame spread. He paint­ed com­mis­sioned por­traits right up until his death in 1925, but in between com­mis­sions he would paint friends and col­leagues for fun. It was one such non-com­mis­sioned paint­ing, Car­na­tion, Lily, Lily, Rose, that grabbed my atten­tion at the Tate Britain and turned me into an instant fan. How­ev­er, the sub­ject of today’s blog is the paint­ing that became Sar­gen­t’s head­line-grab­ber, Por­trait of Madame X.

Just as we saw when I blogged about Edouard Manet, Sargent’s suc­cess­ful career was not with­out scan­dal. In 1884 he sub­mit­ted Por­trait of Madame X to the Paris Salon. “Madame X” was “pro­fes­sion­al beau­ty” and socialite, Vir­ginie Gautreau, the Amer­i­can wife of a French banker. Sar­gent actu­al­ly pur­sued her to paint her, rather than the oth­er way round. It’s a deeply allur­ing piece, with the sit­ter stand­ing in pro­file, and the deep black of her dress empha­sis­ing the “aris­to­crat­ic pal­lor” of her skin. With cinched waist, the ele­gant bone struc­ture, and with one shoul­der strap seem­ing­ly about to fall off the shoul­der, the image could only sug­gest one thing — the erot­ic — and it was this, inevitably (for the time), that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the scan­dal at the Salon. It was only a tem­po­rary set­back (and Sar­gent respond­ed by repaint­ing the shoul­der strap in a “safer” posi­tion), and I don’t sup­pose a lit­tle bit of scan­dal is too harm­ful to the career of a gift­ed artist, after all.

In June of 1999, Nicole Kid­man was the cov­er girl of Vogue, and in her cov­er sto­ry, she posed for pho­tographs in a num­ber of John Singer Sar­gent re-imag­in­ings (includ­ing Madame X) by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Steven Meisel. The pho­to­genic Kid­man suits these pic­tures per­fect­ly so I thought it well worth show­cas­ing them here, along­side their originals…starting with the beguil­ing Madame X.

Madame X
Lady Agnew
Mrs George Swin­ton
Mrs Charles E Inch­es
John Singer Sar­gent
Art

Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

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Giv­en all the stan­dard gen­res of paint­ing open to an artist in 17th cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam – land­scape, por­trai­ture, still life, his­to­ry, reli­gious – you could be for­giv­en for assum­ing that the sub­ject of today’s blog, Rembrandt’s The Anato­my Les­son of Dr Nico­laes Tulp, was some­thing of a one-off. It has a seem­ing­ly very spe­cif­ic and niche sub­ject: that of an anato­my les­son involv­ing the dis­sec­tion of a cadav­er! In fact, though, at the time of Rembrandt’s work in 1632, there was already a strong tra­di­tion of Dutch “guild por­trai­ture” (group por­traits com­mis­sioned by a pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion such as the Guild of Sur­geons) and many of these involved dis­sec­tion scenes, so Rembrandt’s sub­ject was far from unique for the time.

This was the Dutch Gold­en Age. Com­pared to most oth­er coun­tries of 17th cen­tu­ry Europe, the Nether­lands was pos­i­tive­ly pro­gres­sive in its mod­el of gov­ern­ment. Since the for­ma­tion of the Dutch repub­lic in 1581, the Nether­lands had expe­ri­enced the emer­gence of a nation­al and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and both reli­gious free­dom and open trade were high­ly val­ued. With a bur­geon­ing econ­o­my and the rise of the mid­dle class­es, it was a place where Dutch sci­en­tists — and Dutch artists — were able to exper­i­ment with­out fear of papal cen­sure. Guild por­trai­ture was there­fore an expres­sion of Dutch pro­gres­sivism.

The prac­tice of dis­sec­tion, pri­or to the Dutch repub­lic, had been moral­ly ques­tion­able: in fact, the Church had offi­cial­ly con­demned it, and even post-repub­lic it was still a grey area. How­ev­er, it was recog­nised that dis­sec­tion was part and par­cel of sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment, and so Amsterdam’s now-Protes­tant city coun­cil sanc­tioned the prac­tice on the con­di­tion that only the corpses of crim­i­nals were used. Anatom­ic dis­sec­tions soon became high­ly pop­u­lar pub­lic events, last­ing for sev­er­al days (and for that rea­son car­ried out in the win­ter, to retard the decay of the cadav­ers) and gen­er­at­ing a sub­stan­tial income from pay­ing observers.

Artists were thus com­mis­sioned to cap­ture the scene and guild mem­bers would have paid a pret­ty sum to be fea­tured in it. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates this paint­ing from all the oth­ers was the fact that this was Rem­brandt, the most gift­ed and pro­lif­ic artist of his age, and typ­i­cal­ly he under­took to reject the tra­di­tion­al com­po­si­tion of Dutch guild por­trai­ture and instead he adopt­ed a more vis­cer­al style. Rem­brandt puts the corpse at the cen­tre of the scene and por­trays it in full length, in Christ-like repose. It turns a group van­i­tas por­trait into a quite dra­mat­ic and arrest­ing image.

The corpse, inci­den­tal­ly, was one Adri­aan Adri­aan­szoon, who was con­vict­ed for armed rob­bery and sen­tenced to death by hang­ing (which occurred on the very morn­ing of the dis­sec­tion). Per­haps not the most illus­tri­ous rea­son to be cap­tured on can­vas for pos­ter­i­ty, but hey ho!

Anatomy Lesson
Art

Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

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Édouard Manet is thought of as a lead­ing light of the Impres­sion­ists, but actu­al­ly, although he was asso­ci­at­ed with them and was admired by Mon­et and Renoir, he nev­er actu­al­ly exhib­it­ed at any of the Impres­sion­ist Exhi­bi­tions in Paris. He was more of a pre­cur­sor to the new era of artis­tic impres­sion­ism, and still had a foot plant­ed firm­ly in real­ism. His ear­ly work was, how­ev­er, con­tro­ver­sial, and he scan­dalised crit­ics and pub­lic alike, most notably with Le Déje­uner sur l’herbe and Olympia (both 1863), but even these were mod­elled on old clas­si­cal mas­ter­pieces: Giorgione’s Pas­toral Con­cert (1509) and Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) respec­tive­ly. Let’s have a quick look and see if you can spot, in the mind of a nine­teenth cen­tu­ry purist, the ele­ments of Manet’s work that trans­formed ele­gant clas­si­cism into lewd mod­ernism:

How­ev­er, the sub­ject of this blog is actu­al­ly the Manet that is arguably the most recognisable…the cel­e­brat­ed A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. The Folies Bergère was the most famous of Paris’s café-con­cert halls and was not­ed at this time for its new-fan­gled elec­tric lights. We see the frontal image of a bar­maid look­ing out at us from behind her counter, and behind her a huge mir­ror in which we see reflect­ed the back of the bar­maid along with the scene that she her­self is observ­ing. There are the mem­bers of the audi­ence, watch­ing the show, and indeed an ele­ment of the show itself: the legs of the trapeze artist which appear in the very top-left cor­ner of the pic­ture.

The woman behind the bar was actu­al­ly a real per­son, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies Bergère dur­ing the ear­ly 1880s, and whom Manet paint­ed in his stu­dio. The gen­tle­man at the bar was Manet’s neigh­bour. The bot­tles, fruit and vase of flow­ers arranged on the counter are repli­cat­ed with all the pre­ci­sion of a still life paint­ing, and inter­est­ing to note – for such a French-feel­ing paint­ing — the bot­tles of British beer: yes, Bass Pale Ale of all things! The loose British con­nec­tion is main­tained: this famous paint­ing is held not in Paris but at the Cour­tauld Gallery, Lon­don.

Édouard Manet
Art

Tamara de Lempicka’s Young Lady with Gloves (1930)

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Art Deco was one of the first tru­ly inter­na­tion­al styles, influ­enc­ing the design of just about every­thing from build­ings to fur­ni­ture, jew­ellery to fash­ion, and art to every­day objects like radios and vac­u­um clean­ers. It took its name (short for Arts Déco­rat­ifs) from the Expo­si­tion Inter­na­tionale des Arts Déco­rat­ifs et Indus­triels Mod­ernes Arts which was held in Paris in 1925, and which serves as a fair start­ing point to cred­it for the birth of a move­ment. We are slap-bang in the mid­dle of the Roar­ing Twen­ties, the era of the Jazz Age and of flap­pers, of motion pic­tures and the Charleston, of The Great Gats­by and Radio City Music Hall, and whilst this rep­re­sen­ta­tive list smacks of the Unit­ed States, the cul­tur­al vibe was no less felt in Berlin, Paris, Lon­don and Syd­ney. It was an era of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and cul­tur­al dynamism and as such, don’t be sur­prised to see this blog return to this peri­od in the future.

Art Deco drew its inspi­ra­tion from such art move­ments as Cubism, Futur­ism, and the influ­ence of the Bauhaus. It played with geo­met­ric motifs and bright, bold colours, and of all the artists pur­su­ing this style, one of the most mem­o­rable and inter­est­ing was Tama­ra de Lem­pic­ka.

Born in Poland in 1898, she lived, after her par­ents divorced, with her wealthy grand­moth­er, who spoiled her with clothes and trav­el. By age 14 she was attend­ing school in Lau­sanne, and hol­i­day­ing in St Peters­burg. All this high liv­ing gave the young girl an idea of how she want­ed to live and what her future should be. Thus, when she found she had a tal­ent for art, she took her­self to Paris to live among the bour­geois and bohemi­an of the Left Bank (where else?). Between the wars, she paint­ed por­traits of the great and the good, and many of East­ern Europe’s exiled nobil­i­ty, bring­ing her crit­i­cal acclaim, social celebri­ty and con­sid­er­able wealth. She was also well-known for her high­ly stylised nudes.

Her icon­ic work exud­ed a con­fi­dence that epit­o­mised the era (see her Self-Por­trait in the Green Bugat­ti, for instance). But let’s look at her Young Lady with Gloves (AKA Girl in the Green Dress), typ­i­cal of her style. It has stream­lined, geo­met­ric shapes and clean, metal­lic sur­faces depict­ing a beau­ti­ful, sophis­ti­cat­ed woman. She exudes a detached aura of supe­ri­or­i­ty, and there is a visu­al­ly strik­ing inter­play of com­po­si­tion­al effects, angu­lar lines, and shad­ing. The unabashed sen­su­al­ism of those nip­ples and that navel vis­i­ble through the fab­ric is pure de Lem­pic­ka. Small won­der that one of her high-pro­file col­lec­tors is inter­na­tion­al super­star, Madon­na, who has fea­tured some of de Lem­pick­a’s works in her own videos, notably Vogue. Push­ing the bound­aries as a fear­less female artist, she was per­haps the Madon­na of her day.

 

 

Tama­ra de Lem­pic­ka
Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le déje­uner des can­otiers (Lun­cheon of the Boat­ing Par­ty) wowed the crit­ics at the Sev­enth Impres­sion­ist Exhi­bi­tion in 1882 and remains one of the greats of Impres­sion­ism. It depicts a con­vivial bunch of din­ers enjoy­ing a sum­mer­time meal alfres­co at the Mai­son Four­naise, over­look­ing the Seine on the Île de Cha­tou, just west of Paris. This is the heart of Impres­sion­ist leisure land, and to this day the restau­rant exists, on what is now dubbed L’île des Impres­sion­nistes.

The din­ers are all friends or col­leagues of Renoir. In the fore­ground, seat­ed low­er-right, is his fel­low artist Gus­tave Caille­botte, who is gaz­ing at Renoir’s future wife, seam­stress Aline Charig­ot, sit­ting oppo­site and coo­ing at her dog. Next to Caille­botte is actress Angèle Legault and, stand­ing above her, Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Adrien Mag­gi­o­lo. At the back, wear­ing a top hat, art his­to­ri­an and col­lec­tor Charles Ephrus­si speaks with poet and crit­ic, Jules Laforgue.

Lean­ing against the rail­ing are Louise-Alphon­sine Four­naise, the daugh­ter of the restaurant’s pro­pri­etor, and her broth­er, Alphonse Four­naise Jr, who han­dled the boat rentals. Row­ing was the main attrac­tion at Cha­tou, and Renoir’s din­ers wear the straw hats and blue dress­es that were the fash­ion­able boat­ing attire of mid­dle-class Parisian daytrip­pers.

Renoir spent months mak­ing numer­ous changes to his can­vas, paint­ing the indi­vid­ual fig­ures when his mod­els were avail­able (there is cor­re­spon­dence from Renoir moan­ing about mod­els fail­ing to turn up). Nonethe­less, Renoir cap­tures the fresh­ness of his vision splen­did­ly, and we can allow our­selves to be fooled that he has spon­ta­neous­ly cap­tured a moment in time. It is a vibrant work of art cel­e­brat­ing good com­pa­ny and good din­ing, and it cer­tain­ly gives us the impres­sion of a very pleas­ant and care­free after­noon.

Details of the par­ty-goers

 

Art

J M W Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire (1839)

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J M W Turn­er is famed for his mas­tery of light and colour. For him, as for Mon­et, light was a mirac­u­lous phe­nom­e­non — it pro­duced colour, it sculpt­ed form and mood and it revealed the beau­ty of nature. He was also remark­ably pro­lif­ic, leav­ing some 550 oil paint­ings and 2,000 water­colours (as well as about 30,000 sketch­es), so you don’t have to go out of your way in this coun­try to find a Turn­er. He was a keen trav­eller, and I love the fact that he came to York­shire and paint­ed such famil­iar land­marks (to us) as Hardraw Force, Mal­ham Cove, and Hare­wood House. Indeed, the Tate holds six full sketch­books from Turner’s tour of York­shire in 1816.

How­ev­er, the sub­ject of this blog is set not in York­shire but on the Thames riv­er. This paint­ing by Turn­er, The Fight­ing Temeraire, on dis­play in the Nation­al Gallery, depicts the last jour­ney of the HMS Temeraire. The Temeraire had been a cel­e­brat­ed gun­ship that had fought valiant­ly in Lord Nel­son’s fleet at the bat­tle of Trafal­gar in 1805. Indeed, pri­or to that bat­tle, she had been mere­ly the Temeraire; it was after­wards she was hon­oured with the “Fight­ing” sobri­quet. Thir­ty three years lat­er, how­ev­er, decay­ing and well past her glo­ry days, she was towed up the Thames from Sheer­ness to be bro­ken up in a Rother­hithe ship­yard.

Turn­er’s paint­ing pays trib­ute to the Temeraire’s hero­ic past. The glo­ri­ous sun­set is a fan­fare of colour in her hon­our. Paint is laid on thick­ly to ren­der the sun’s rays strik­ing the clouds, whilst by con­trast, the ship’s rig­ging is metic­u­lous­ly paint­ed. It can be seen as a sym­bol of the end of an era, even the decline of Britain’s naval pow­er, with the sun set­ting on the days of ele­gant, tall-mast­ed war­ships. The Temeraire is already phan­tas­mal, behind the more sol­id form of the squat lit­tle steam tug that pulls her along to her fate.

Turn­er was in his six­ties when he paint­ed The Fight­ing Temeraire; per­haps this was behind his think­ing in terms of the end of an era. In any event, the paint­ing is an arrest­ing piece of work and, dis­tinct from Turn­er’s many strict­ly-land­scape paint­ings, it tells a sto­ry. I love it.

 

The Fight­ing Temeraire

Art

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Census at Bethlehem (1566)

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Last Sun­day, my fam­i­ly and I attend­ed a Christ­mas car­ol ser­vice at our local church, resplen­dent, as every year, with can­dle­light and sea­son­al good­will. As well as the age-old car­ols that we all know and love (or at least tol­er­ate fond­ly, after the decades of rep­e­ti­tion), there were of course sev­er­al appo­site read­ings, and it is the one below, from Luke 2:1–5, that inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Cae­sar Augus­tus that all the world should be reg­is­tered… So all went to be reg­is­tered, every­one to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Beth­le­hem, because he was of the house and lin­eage of David, to be reg­is­tered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.

This of course refers to the cen­sus at Beth­le­hem, and the scene was depict­ed won­der­ful­ly well (albeit set anachro­nis­ti­cal­ly and anatopis­ti­cal­ly in 16th cen­tu­ry Flan­ders) in this 1566 oil paint­ing by one of my favourite artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As is usu­al with works by this Nether­lan­dish Renais­sance mas­ter, much plea­sure is derived from view­ing the piece up close and dis­cov­er­ing the mul­ti­tude of details.

We are look­ing down on a snow-cov­ered vil­lage (and indeed this is one of the first exam­ples of snowy land­scape in West­ern art, the pre­vi­ous win­ter of 1565 hav­ing been, not unco­in­ci­den­tal­ly, one of the harsh­est on record). Peo­ple are going about their dai­ly busi­ness: clear­ing the snow, cross­ing the frozen pond, warm­ing them­selves around a fire. The chil­dren are throw­ing snow­balls, skat­ing, sledg­ing, spin­ning tops. In the right hand fore­ground, we see a man with a large car­pen­ter’s saw, lead­ing an ox and an ass, on which rides a woman wrapped up tight­ly against the cold. These are of course none oth­er than Joseph and Mary, who have come to Beth­le­hem to be enrolled in the uni­ver­sal cen­sus ordered by Emper­or Augus­tus.

With a few deft brush­strokes Bruegel bril­liant­ly cap­tures vil­lage life, whilst sub­tly depict­ing the scene just pri­or to the nativ­i­ty (since after reg­is­ter­ing, there was, of course, no room at the inn). I could spend ages glimps­ing new details revealed in Bruegel’s works, and indeed have done on sev­er­al occa­sions in var­i­ous gal­leries of Europe, where I have usu­al­ly been left to it, meet­ing my long-suf­fer­ing fam­i­ly lat­er in the gift shop! Fun­ni­ly enough, this piece I have yet to actu­al­ly see (it’s in Brus­sels’ Musée des Beaux Arts, which is still only “on the list”).

 

Art

Antonio Canova’s Sculpture of the Three Graces (1817)

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Back in May, my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um in Lon­don, and enjoyed, amongst oth­er things, its impres­sive col­lec­tion of sculp­tures, includ­ing this beau­ti­ful piece from the great Ital­ian neo­clas­si­cal sculp­tor, Anto­nio Cano­va. The Three Graces were daugh­ters of Zeus and com­pan­ions to the Mus­es, and were a cel­e­brat­ed sub­ject in clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture and art. They are Thalia (youth and beau­ty), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Agla­ia (ele­gance), and the god­dess­es are depict­ed hud­dled togeth­er, nude, hair braid­ed and held atop their heads in a knot, the three slen­der fig­ures meld­ing into one in their embrace.

The sculp­ture is carved from a sin­gle slab of white mar­ble. Canova’s assis­tants would have rough­ly hewn out the mar­ble, leav­ing Cano­va to per­form the final carv­ing and shap­ing of the stone to high­light the Graces’ soft flesh. It was com­mis­sioned by John Rus­sel, 6th Duke of Bed­ford, who vis­it­ed Cano­va at his stu­dio in Rome in 1814. Bed­ford was cap­ti­vat­ed by the group of the Three Graces which Cano­va had carved for the Empress Josephine, the estranged wife of Napoleon Bona­parte (“I frankly declare”, he is report­ed to have said, “that I have seen noth­ing in ancient or mod­ern sculp­ture that has giv­en me more plea­sure than this piece of work”). Josephine had died in May of that year, and the Duke offered to buy the sculp­ture from Cano­va, but Josephine’s son claimed it (and that ver­sion is now in the Her­mitage, St Peters­burg) so Bed­ford com­mis­sioned a new one.

The com­plet­ed stat­ue was installed at the Duke’s home, Woburn Abbey. An 1822 cat­a­logue of the sculp­ture at Woburn summed up the appeal of the work: “in the con­strained flex­i­bil­i­ty with which their arms are entwined round each oth­er; in the per­fect sym­me­try of their limbs, in the del­i­ca­cy of detail, and exquis­ite­ness of fin­ish, in the feet and hands; in that look of liv­ing soft­ness giv­en to the sur­face of the mar­ble, which looks as if it would yield to the touch…this great sculp­tor has shown the utmost del­i­ca­cy and judge­ment”.

It is indeed remark­able to get “up close and per­son­al” with a great sculp­ture like this and mar­vel at the skill and del­i­ca­cy required to achieve such an exquis­ite fin­ish from a block of stone. Canova’s oth­er mas­ter­piece, Cupid and Psy­che in the Lou­vre, elic­its the same admi­ra­tion.

  

Anto­nio Cano­va
Art

Claude Monet exhibits Impression, Sunrise (1874)

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In 1872, Claude Mon­et vis­it­ed his home­town of Le Havre in the north west of France and pro­ceed­ed to paint six can­vas­es depict­ing the port “dur­ing dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from vary­ing view­points, some from the water itself and oth­ers from a hotel room look­ing down over the port”. One paint­ing from this series was to become very famous.

Impres­sion, soleil lev­ant (Impres­sion, Sun­rise) was debuted in April 1874 in Paris at an inde­pen­dent exhi­bi­tion launched as an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial Salon de Paris exhi­bi­tions of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The exhi­bi­tion, by a group call­ing itself the “Société Anonyme des Artistes, Pein­tres, Sculp­teurs, Graveurs etc” was led by Mon­et, along with oth­er such future lumi­nar­ies as Edgar Degas, Camille Pis­sar­ro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sis­ley. Two hun­dred works were shown and about 4,000 peo­ple attend­ed, includ­ing, of course, some rather unsym­pa­thet­ic crit­ics.

Mon­et described how he came up with a title for the paint­ing: “They asked me for a title for the catalogue…it could­n’t real­ly be tak­en for a view of Le Havre, so I said: ‘Put Impres­sion’ “. While this title was appar­ent­ly cho­sen in haste for the cat­a­logue, the term “Impres­sion­ism” was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of some of the nat­u­ral­is­tic paint­ings ema­nat­ing from the so-called Bar­bi­zon school of painters. How­ev­er, it was in crit­ic Louis Leroy’s review of the 1874 exhi­bi­tion, “The Exhi­bi­tion of the Impres­sion­ists”, for the news­pa­per Le Chari­vari, that he used “Impres­sion­ism” to describe this new style of work dis­played, and he said it was typ­i­fied by Monet’s paint­ing.

This term, then, ini­tial­ly used to both describe and dep­re­cate a move­ment, was tak­en up by all par­ties to describe the style, and Monet’s Impres­sion, Sun­rise was thus con­sid­ered to have encap­su­lat­ed the start of the move­ment. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

 

 

Claude Mon­et