Art Eyewitness Book Review: Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Drawings by Christopher Lloyd & Impressionism by Ralph Skea

Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Drawings

by Christopher Lloyd

Thames & Hudson /$60/288 pages

Impressionism

by Ralph Skea

Thames & Hudson-Art Essentials /$16.95/176 pages

Reviewed by Ed Voves 

When the Museum of Modern Art in New York City announced that it would be shutting its doors from mid-June to late October 2019 for renovations and a reconfiguration of its iconic collection, I resolved to journey to NYC before the museum closed. 

A lot of fellow art lovers had the same idea. MOMA was crowded almost beyond capacity on the day I visited, June 13. Certain galleries, however, were even more packed with patrons than others. 

It came as no surprise that the paintings commanding such elbow-to-elbow attention were works by the 19th century Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists, the "old masters" of  modern art.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) 

 Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art's Monet Gallery.

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (also called Neo-Impressionism) command scholarly respect, as well.  Book store shelves are packed with volumes offering new insights into the painters who established "the heroism of modern life" as a valid theme in the visual arts. Two new books from Thames & Hudson have just been published, Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Drawings by Christopher Lloyd and Impressionism by Ralph Skea. Each is an outstanding addition to the literature of Impressionism. 

Why the continuing appeal of Monet, Renoir and Seurat? It was not always so. When MOMA first opened its doors in 1929, interest in the founding generation of modern art was at a low ebb. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, 

showing patrons with Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.

It was not until the 1950's that the popularity of the Impressionists began to thrive. The publication in 1946 of The History of Impressionism by John Rewald, still the "gold standard" book on the subject, was key to this revival. Hollywood "bio-pics" of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge, 1952) and Vincent van Gogh (Lust for Life, 1956) also provided a huge impetus for reawakening interest in La Belle Époque.

Christopher Lloyd's Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Drawings is a particularly impressive

book. From the standpoint of the research and analysis which the author devoted to this topic and the superlative quality of the narrative, this is a book to rival - and complement - Rewald's History of Impressionism. 

In writing about the Impressionist and Post-Impressionists,  Lloyd does not limit himself to  considering preparatory sketches and exhibition-quality pastels. Astute commentary on the working technique of these artists is shared in short, masterful biographical portraits. 

Mary Cassatt, Mother Combing Her Child's Hair, 1901

These brief character studies are models of psychological insight. Throughout the book, Lloyd uses a few, well-chosen words to create an image or prove a point which other books on Impressionism could not match in an entire chapter.

Writing about Édouard Manet, whose most controversial works were often re-workings of classic artistic themes, Lloyd writes, "Manet used the past as a Trojan horse to establish the primacy of modernism."

Edgar Degas, Dancer Shown in Position Facing Three-Quarters Front, c. 1872

Lloyd was for many years the curator in charge of the Queen's Pictures for the Royal Collection. He is also a specialist on the career of Edgar Degas and his 2014 book, Degas: Drawings and Pastels is the definitive work on the most accomplished draftsman of all the Impressionists. His chapter on Degas is a high point of his new book, as well. Here is a more extended sample of Lloyd's marvelous prose:

Degas's art ... is based on a penetrating and intelligent investigation of society comparable with the novels of contemporary naturalist writers such as Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant. A keen observer of ballet dancers, cabaret performers, jockeys, milliners, laundresses, ironers and prostitutes, Degas became respectful of the skills of others and the demands made upon them, to the extent that in the wider sense the challenges they faced can be interpreted as a metaphor for the struggles he had in perfecting his own art. In his depiction of everyday modern life, therefore, Degas sought out the heroic amid the mundane and the universal amid the incidental.

Here we see art history raised to a transcendental plain of human - and humane - commentary. 

In purely artistic terms, Lloyd shows that the famous Impressionist technique of painting directly from nature was only one of the "arrows" in their quiver. Almost all of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists utilized preparatory drawings from time-to-time, as we can see in this sketch by Renoir for The Dance in the Country (1883).

Pierre Auguste Renoir, Study for The Dance in the Country, 1883

Lloyd, of course, is not alone in pointing out that the Impressionists did not always paint sur le motif. This year's premier Impressionist exhibition, The Impressionist's Eye at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, underscored the often methodical attention devoted to drawing. Lloyd, however goes one step further by including the Italian-born artist, Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917) as one of the Impressionist artists skillful in drawing. As the illustrations of his work displayed in the book testify, Zandomeneghi was a maestro with pastel chalk.

Federico Zandomeneghi, Waking Up, 1895

Zandomeneghi was a latecomer to Impressionism, exhibiting at the 1880 Salon. Before this, he was a member of the Macchiaioli art circle, based in Florence. "Macchia" means splash, used in reference to their brush technique, which was similar to that of their French contemporaries.   

The Macchiaioli, in fact, were a parallel avant-garde movement astonishingly akin to the Impressionists. Lloyd is right on target when he notes that Zandomeneghi had only to leave the Macchiaioli's meeting place in Florence for its Impressionist counterpart, "on coming to Paris Zandomeneghi was exchanging the Caffe Michelangioli for the Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes on the Place Pigalle..."

Such reflections raise the rather subversive question of why there are so many exhibitions devoted to the Impressionists and so few to the Macchiaioli. According to my research, the last major exhibit of Macchiaioli paintings in the English-speaking world was held in 1986 at the art museums of UCLA and Harvard. Until this omission is corrected, we at least have Lloyd's spirited chapter on Zandomeneghi to remind us of the Macchiaioli.

Impressionism was never limited to one nation, though of course, France and French painters had the starring role in the crucial early years. Ralph Skea, in the second of the books under review, emphasizes the international character of Impressionism in his splendid volume of Thames & Hudson's Art Essentials series. 

Skea,an artist himself, pays special attention to the American and Australian Impressionist painters, some of whom required quite a bit of convincing before joining the movement.

Examining the career of J. Alden Weir (1852-1919), Skea notes that Weir encountered Impressionist paintings while studying in France, finding them "to be unprofessional, lacking in correct drawing and composition."

After returning to the United States, Weir experienced a change of heart. He joined John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) and Theodore Robinson (1852-1896) at the Cos Cob art colony in New England. Weir's The Red Bridge (1895) is one of the greatest of American Impressionist paintings. 

John Singer Sargent, An Out-of-Doors Study, 1889

American Impressionism had special challenges which kept it from achieving the special status it deserved. Two of its most gifted practitioners, Twachtman and Robinson, died tragically young. The most gifted American artist of the era, John Singer Sargent, painted an wide-ranging body of Impressionist works, in oil and watercolor, but became side-tracked by his grandiose mural series for the Boston Public Library. By the time the American - and Australian - Impressionists were hitting their stride, new developments in art had pushed Impressionism away from the vanguard of Modernism.

Skea skillfully incorporates this American episode within the overall saga of Impressionism, all within 176 pages. He recounts the rise and enduring appeal of the Impressionism in an engaging, thoughtful way which will appeal to readers new to the Impressionist's story and rewarding to art lovers who have read Rewald's classic account.

Skea's Impressionism is remarkable both for its concision and the way that unfamiliar artists or little known facts are introduced without affecting the thrust of the narrative. For instance, Skea notes that one of the lesser-known members of the movement, Armand Guillaumin, was one of the first to "to include factory chimneys as a major feature, showing the visual impact of recent industrialization."

Armand Guillaumin, Sunset at Ivry, 1873

Skea makes a bold comparison between Guillaumin's Sunset at Ivry with another Impressionist painting which had been displayed at the first Impressionist Salon in 1874. This was none other than Monet's signature work which was to give the movement its name: Impression: Sunrise.  

Skea writes:
Guillaumin's dramatic representation of a sunset is in many ways a companion picture to Monet's more famous and more abbreviated "impression" of a sunrise. Both images brought to the exhibition the Impressionist commitment to painting light by means of heightened colour effects.

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872

Taken together, Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Drawings by Christopher Lloyd and Impressionism by Ralph Skea prove their points. The Impressionists did indeed make carefully composed drawings as part of their oeuvre. Despite the harsh, derisive criticism hurled at them during the early years of the movement, the Impressionists' novel handling of light and their depiction of social themes changed the trajectory of art forever.

How like the sunrises and sunsets they painted are the pictures of Monet and his colleagues! One never fails to see the Sun break through the mists of dawn or sink below the horizon in a veil of fading glory without feeling a sense of awe, a renewed belief that the living spirit of the cosmos will triumph and endure. So too, for the art of the Impressionists.

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Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                                           
Book cover images courtesy of Thames & Hudson 

Introductory Image:
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, (French, 1834-1917) A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers, 1865. Oil on canvas: 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 # 29.100.128

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art's Monet Gallery. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, showing patrons with Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.

Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926) Mother Combing Her Child's Hair, c. 1901. Pastel on gray paper: 25 1/4 x 31 5/8 in. (64.1 x 80.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Mary T. Cockcroft, 46.102

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, (French, 1834-1917) A Ballet Dancer in Position Facing Three-Quarters Front, c. 1872. Pencil and black chalk, heightened with white chalk on pink wove paper: 41 x 27.6 cm (16 1/8 x 10 7/8 in.)  Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum. # 1965.263

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) Study for The Dance in the Country, 1883.  Brush and brown, blue, and black wash over black chalk or graphite: 49.5 x 30.5 cm (19 1/2 x 12 in.) Yale University Art Museum. Bequest of Edith Malvina K. Wetmore.  #1966.80.25

Federico Zandomeneghi (Italian, 1841-1917) Waking Up,1895. Pastel mounted on board: 60 x 72 cm. (23 5/8  x 28 3/8 in.) Palazzo dei Te, Mantua.

John Singer Sargent  (American, 1856-1925) An Out-of-Doors Study, 1889. Oil on canvas, frame: 41 1/2 x 48 5/8 x 6 in. (105.4 x 123.5 x 15.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 20.640

Armand Guillaumin (French, 1841-1927) Sunset at Ivry, 1873. Oil on canvas: 81 cm. x 65 cm. (25 1/2 x 32 in.) Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) Impression: Sunrise, 1872. Oil on canvas: 48 x 63 cm. (19 x 25 in.) The Musée Marmottan, Paris.

The Impressionist's Eye at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Impressionist's Eye

Philadelphia Museum of Art

April 16 - August 18, 2019

Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photography by Anne Lloyd

Curators of art exhibitions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries customarily displayed paintings floor-to-ceiling. Placement of an oil painting or a watercolor could make or break its reputation - and marketability. 

When I visited the current blockbuster exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Impressionist's Eye, my eyes almost immediately detected a "problem" or warning flag. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's color-drenched Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, painted in 1889, hovered so high up on the gallery wall that prolonged study would surely leave the viewer with a "crick" in the neck.

Since the location of Renoir's still life fails to conform to the best practice of modern museum display, there had to be a reason for its seeming off-beat placement. Even by the standards of the 1800's, Still Life with Flowers and Fruit demands to be hung at eye level or close to it. Why so high?

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

 Gallery view of The Impressionist's Eye exhibition,

 Renoir's Still Life with Flowers and Fruit at top. 

The answer, as I discovered, had everything to do with the title and theme of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) exhibition: The Impressionist's Eye.

In 1889, Renoir received some decorative commissions for several country villas. It is believed that when confronted with the challenge of creating an eye-catching painting for placement above a door way of one of these villas, Renoir conceived the idea of this still life. 

A brilliant balance of complementary colors for the flowers set against a blood orange and Burgundy red background, Renoir's painting transformed the "blank" space over the door. Still Life with Flowers and Fruit is the kind of painting which turns a room into a salon.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, c.1889

With this remarkable work, Renoir delivered a masterful lesson on the way that an artist's eye looks at a "problem" and finds a solution. His success calls into question the idea that Impressionists did little more than focus their eyes and paint the motif.

In an often quoted remark, Paul Cezanne declared that his fellow Impressionist, Claude Monet, "is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!"

Monet certainly was "an eye" as his long career of depicting the natural world attests. When we look at a Monet landscape like Bend in the Epte River near Giverny, the "eye-hand" coordination of this great artist is very evident.The sensation of looking at the dappled, rustling leaves of poplar trees along the riverbank was skillfully transmitted to the canvas. Monet's astonishing visual faculties were key to this artistic alchemy.

Claude Monet, Bend in the Epte River near Giverny,1888

Yet Monet was more than just an "eye." His technique was in a constant state of evolving, as was the work of Camille Pizarro, Edgar Degas and the rest. The Impressionists explored the realm of perceptional reality, earning a place for their art in the vanguard of the social and scientific theories of their time. Jules Laforgue, a noted critic, wrote in 1883:

The Impressionist’s eye is, in short, the most advanced eye in human evolution, the one which up until now has grasped and rendered the most complicated combination of colors known. 

Despite their emphasis on painting in oils en plein air, the Impressionists were anything but doctrinaire. They embraced a wide range of media, exploring every opportunity - like Renoir with Still Life with Flowers and Fruit - to create works of art which were innovatory in technique and of tremendous emotional significance.

The Impressionist's Eye is the latest in a series of major exhibitions almost entirely composed of works of art from the PMA's collection. With a massive rehab of the Philadelphia Museum underway, PMA curators are looking intently at their own extensive holdings of paintings, works on paper and sculpture.The immediate objective of such scrutiny is to continue presenting major exhibitions in a "hard hat" environment. But there is a much more important curatorial task underway, as well.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018)

 The Resnick Rotunda at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Most of the oil paintings in The Impressionist's Eye exhibition are regularly on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Others, especially the clutch of precious Van Gogh's, are so often on loan to other museums that the iconic Sunflowers and Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle are nowhere to be seen.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

 Gallery view of The Impressionist's Eye exhibition.

 Claude Monet's Path on the Island of Saint Martin, Vétheuil, 1881, at right

By looking anew at these familiar Impressionist oil paintings in the setting of a special exhibition, we are enabled to gain a better appreciation of these works. This is especially true in assessing their relation to the revolutionary era in which they were created.

The Impressionist oeuvre included sketches, water colors, prints, photographs and sculpture - every form of art which these artists could use to take the measure of the world around them.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

Three Impressionist works on paper by (clockwise)  

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cézanne and Berthe Morisot 

The juxtaposition of so many Impressionist sketches with a "starting line-up" of celebrated oil paintings is one of the immediately noteworthy features of The Impressionist's Eye. I was especially impressed with a group of sketches by three different artists, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cezanne and Berthe Morisot. Each drawing demonstrates versatility in draftmanship across a spectrum from the crisp realism  of Toulouse-Lautrec to the ethereal evocation of beauty and character in the works by Cezanne and Morisot.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

Toulouse-Lautrec's Portrait of Gustave Lucien Dennery (detail),1883

Toulouse-Lautrec's Portrait of Gustave Lucien Dennery is an outstanding work in its own right, but was almost certainly created in preparation for a full-scale oil portrait executed the same year,1883. This portrait, of an artist colleague of Toulouse-Lautrec's, is in the Louvre collection. It would have been a major coup to have the drawing and the oil painting displayed for comparison in The Impressionist's Eye.

Fortunately, the Philadelphia  Museum of Art's collection has a major Impressionist oil painting and preliminary sketch which permits us to do exactly that.

Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire is one of the most familiar Impressionist-era masterpieces, almost always on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. By contrasting this mighty oil painting with one of Cezanne's water color and graphite versions of the mountain, we are enabled to look ourselves with "the Impressionist's eye."

Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, oil on canvas, 1902-1904, above,

Cézanne's watercolor & graphite depiction of Mont Ste-Victoire, below.   

Jennifer A. Thompson, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's chief curator of European art, provides a key insight to understanding Cezanne's devotion to Mont Sainte-Victoire.

Thompson notes that Cezanne created seventy images of Mont Sainte-Victoire, "making it one of his most repeated and varied themes. None of these objects is a repetition of another; each comes at the motif from a different point of view..."

Cezanne's deliberation in visualizing Mont Sainte-Victoire - focusing and refocusing to gain new impressions of his favorite mountain - was a trait he shared with his fellow Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Their art works, in turn, reflected scientific inquiry and social debate occurring at the same time.

The great American scholar, Meyer Schapiro (1904-1997) traced the long debate on the nature of human perception which took place prior to the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. The shift in scientific theory from a belief in absolute phenomena to a world of transitory sensations sparked acrimonious debate. This was reflected in the critical response to the Impressionist salons of the 1870's and 80's. In a book based on his famous lecture series on Impressionism, Schapiro noted:

Impressionist pictures were, in their day, often described as madly arbitrary because the painters gave to familiar objects in the pictures of landscapes colors that others had not yet perceived in nature. Scientists, exploiting their authority, supported the hostile, often philistine, reactions, by asserting that a defect of the artist's eye, lens, or retina was responsible for the tones of violet in their canvases, much as a doctor later accounted for El Greco's elongated figures by his supposed astigmatism...  Although the Impressionists shocked their contemporaries by introducing into landscape certain tones and relationships of colors that looked unreal, they were later acclaimed as the acute observers of a true coloring that we now take for granted.

The Impressionist's Eye charts the way the "madly arbitrary" coloration of Monet, Renoir and company was put into practice. Organized thematically, we are enabled to see how the "eye" of these pioneering modernists focused on nature, the modern city, everyday objects and people (with a special nod to the bathers of Degas, Renoir and Cezanne).

By following a thematic path for the exhibit, Jennifer Thompson draws attention to the academic distinction between "Impressionists" and "Post-Impressionists." It would be reckless to deny that 1886, the year of the last Impressionist salon, was not a major turning point. At the last Impressionist salon, Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte created a sensation. A new school of art, based on pointillist dabs of color, was proclaimed, later called Post or Neo-Impressionism. 

But was there really such a "disconnect" between the Impressionist "founders" = Monet, Pissarro and Renoir - and the second generation who embraced Seurat's exacting pointillist color theory? 

Camille Pissarro, Railroad to Dieppe, 1886

Camille Pissarro, the "father" of Impressionism, embraced pointillism - for a few years - as we can see in one of the key paintings of the exhibition, Railroad to Dieppe. Pissarro wrote that he spent two weeks of laborious effort on this scene. The impact of urban and Industrial development, here in the shape of the railroad locomotive, was a key element of Pissarro's oeuvre throughout his long career. 

Pissarro's flirtation with pointillism raises questions of Impressionism vs Post- Impressionism. Where, for instance, do unconventional artists like Berthe Morisot, Vincent van Gogh and the great Degas fit into such a hard and fast equation?

Given the continuities and singularities of the Impressionist revolution, it is perhaps unfortunate that the artists did not retain their original group title, "Independents." Had this been done, the "either or" categories would not likely have been created.

A particularly astute quote from the exhibition text provides the best answer to this important topic.

For the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, works that were rapidly produced — or gave the appearance of being made quickly — were complete statements in themselves. Over a forty-year period, we witness their mark-making changing across media from blunt strokes to rational dabs and dots and later to flat planes of color, as they sought to capture fleeting moments.

Given the "embarrassment of riches" on display in The Impressionist's Eye, one could continue a review like this for a very long time without exhausting superlatives in describing the exhibit. In closing, it is more sensible to underscore several salient points.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

Jennifer Thompson, curator of European art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

First, Jennifer Thompson has just written a major study of the art of this era, on view in the exhibit. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an outstanding book. I plan a separate review for the summer months.

The second point is that The Impressionist's Eye is an exhibition which deserves a second or third visit. Many of the works on paper will be replaced by a second rotation, due to their sensitivity to light. Among the treasures due to be displayed will be Mary Cassatt's stunning reworking of the techniques of the great Japanese print-makers, The Letter. 

Mary Cassatt,The Letter, 1890-1891

Ultimately, the greatest insight to be derived from The Impressionist's Eye is a seemingly contradictory point. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and all of the other "Independents" devoted their prodigious talents to depicting life in its temporary, transitory dimensions. But in doing so, they pioneered ways of looking at "fleeting moments" that have become an enduring source of joy, insight and creative inspiration for all humankind.

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Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                 
Images courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Original photos courtesy of Anne Lloyd, all rights reserved.                                                                                           


Introductory Image:
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers (1889), collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view at the The Impressionist's Eye exhibition.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of The Impressionist's Eye exhibition, showing Pierre Renoir's Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, c.1889.  

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, c.1889. 39 1/4 × 55 1/4 inches (99.7 × 140.3 cm) Oil on canvas The Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., Collection,  1963 Philadelphia Museum of Art,1963-116-16

Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) Bend in the Epte River near Giverny,1888. 29 x 36 9/16 inches (73.7 x 92.9 cm) Oil on canvas  The William L. Elkins Collection,  1924  E1924-3-16

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Gallery view of the Resnick Rotunda, one of the principal galleries devoted to Impressionist painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of The Impressionist's Eye exhibition, showing (at right) Claude Monet's Path on the Island of Saint Martin, Vétheuil, 1881. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Three Impressionist works on paper (clockwise): Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Portrait of Gustave Lucien Dennery, 1883, Paul Cézanne's Peasant Girl Wearing a Fichu, 1890-1893 and  Berthe-Marie-Pauline Morisot's Young Woman with Brown Hair, 1894.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Portrait of Gustave Lucien Dennery, 1883. Sheet: 24 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches (61.6 x 47 cm) Charcoal and black crayon on laid paper (recto and verso)  The Henry P. McIlhenny  Collection  in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny,  1986  1986-26-33

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906) Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-1904. 28 3/4 × 36 3/16 inches (73 × 91.9 cm) Oil on canvas The George W. Elkins Collection, 1936  E1936-1-1

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906) Mont Ste. Victoire, c.1902-1906  Sheet: 18 1/2 × 12 1/4 inches (47 × 31.1 cm) Watercolor  and graphite on wove paper  Made possible by the families of Helen Tyson Madeira and Charles R. Tyson, 2015  2015-42-1  

Camille Pissarro (French, born in the Virgin Islands, 1830-1903) Railroad to Dieppe, 1886. 21 × 25 inches (53.3 × 63.5 cm) Framed: 32 × 35 inches (81.3 × 88.9 cm) Oil on canvas. Bequest of Helen Tyson Madeira, 2014 2014-167-1

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of The Impressionist's Eye exhibition, showing curator Jennifer Thompson presenting a lecture.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (American, 1844-1926) The Letter. 1890-1891  Plate: 13 9/16 x 8 15/16 inches (34.4 x 22.7 cm) Sheet: 17 x 12 inches (43.2 x 30.5 cm) Color drypoint and aquatint The Louis E. Stern Collection,  1963 1963-181-122

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM AND THE DREAM OF REALITIES: PAINTING, POETRY, MUSIC at the Phillips Collection

Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities:

 Painting, Poetry, Music 

September 27, 2014, through January 11, 2015.

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In May 1886, the Impressionists held their eighth and last joint exhibition. Some of the great pioneers of  Impressionism - Claude Monet, Pierre Renoir and Alfred Sisley -  did not participate. But two young innovators, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, did exhibit paintings. 

Seurat displayed more than several new works of art. He unveiled a revolutionary technique - Pointillism. With this juxtaposition of thousands of minute dots of color on his canvas, Seurat created a sensation. His luminous A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte marked the beginning of a new age of art, a new way of seeing.  

The ensuing artistic revolution, which quickly received the title of Neo-Impressionism, is the subject of a splendid exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music traces the transformation of Seurat's meticulous configurations of colored dots into a major cultural event in the rise of Modernism.

Two key features of the exhibition need to be quickly addressed. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is not on view at the Phillips collection. This vast masterpiece, the pride of the Art Institute of Chicago, is in too delicate condition to travel on loan. The second noteworthy point is that the outstanding array of paintings on view in the Phillips exhibition illustrate a theme which is not dependent on any one work of art, even one of the stature of La Grande Jatte.

Art scholars usually focus upon Neo-Impressionism's adaptation of scientific color theory to art. Curator Cornelia Homberg, however,  has shifted the focus of Neo-Impressionism to its relationship to Symbolism, the great cultural movement in Europe during the 1880's and 1890's.

Symbolism aimed to discover and represent the inner wisdom of humanity. Henry van de Velde, the Belgian painter who played a major role in the rise of Art Nouveau, affirmed that this was the parallel goal of Neo-Impressionism, as well. Van de Velde wrote in 1890, that the Neo-Impressionists aimed "to establish the Dream of realities ... to strive for the pursuit of the Intangible and meditate - in silence - to inscribe the mysterious Meaning." 

Seurat's role was, of course, pivotal to the birth of Neo-impressionism. His radiant Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, painted the same year as La Grande Jatte, readily enables visitors to the Phillips exhibition to grasp the nature of  pointillist technique. 

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888. 

Naturalism is another matter. Seurat's Port-en-Bessin is very different from one of Monet's views of the famous natural arch at Etretat, also on the coast of Normandy. Monet painted  scenes of Etretat at different times of the day to reflect actual moments of reality. Seurat's  Port-en-Bessin has a stylized, almost childlike feel  to it. The scene of fierce fighting during the 1944 D-Day landings, Port-en-Bessin is subdivided into three clearly demarcated zones, land, sea and sky, like a medieval depiction of the realms of God's creation.

Seurat also created remarkable theater-inspired works, which appear in the exhibition at the Phillips. Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887, and At the Gaîté Rochechouart (Caféconcert), c. 1887–88, show a direct kinship with La Grande Jatte in the positioning of the figures. These distinctive works, which have the tone and quality of photographs, demonstrate that Seurat embraced the culture as well as the science of his era.

Georges Seurat, Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887.

Just as Neo-impressionism was gaining momentum, Seurat contracted diptheria and died with shocking suddeness in 1891. That year also saw the premature death of Albert Dubois-Pillet, a French army officer who was a gifted Neo-Impressionist artist.  A little before these calamities had come the rejection of Pointillism by Camille Pissarro after several years of experimentation.

Albert Dubois-Pillet, Little Circus Camp, n.d.

These tragic events placed the burden of leadership of the Neo-Impressionist movement upon the shoulders of Seurat's devoted friend, Paul Signac. It was Signac who wrote the key text,  From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, published in 1899. In his book, Signac asserted that Neo-Impressionist art "thanks to its constant observation of contrast, its rational composition, and its aesthetic language of colors, includes a general harmony and a moral harmony."

Seurat labored for two years, 1884 to 1886, painting La Grande Jatte.  While it is true that he made many preparatory studies for this landmark painting, Seurat's approach was more of a musical composer than a transcriber of nature. He carefully placed the Sunday afternoon pleasure seekers on his landscape as a composer arranges the notes of his or her symphony, creating  "a general harmony and a moral harmony."

When Signac began to paint a great series of seascapes, he added the names of musical movements to the titles of many of his paintings. This was not a culture-conscious ploy, but rather an accurate visual reflection of musical cadence.

Paul Signac, Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221, 1891.

Look at Signac's Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221 from the series The Sea, The Boats, Concarneau. The armada of  small fishing boats and the gentle, rippling  movement of the sea perfectly evoke the slow, graceful tempo of an adagio in music. Signac, an experienced sailor with his own yacht, skillfully united nature and art, music and painting in this brilliant work.

Signac was a charismatic figure. Under his leadership, the Neo-Impressionism movement rallied. Signac was also left-wing in his politics  and was sympathetic to the Anarchist movement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an 1886 sketch by Signac, The Gas Tanks at Clichy,which shows an Anarchist slogan, "Death to the Cops" scrawled on the wall of a blighted area of Paris. Signac's painting, based on this sketch, has gone missing.

Signac was joined by another artist with a radical political background, Maximilien Luce. Arrested by the French police in 1894 on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of President Sadi Carnot, Luce was later acquitted. Art critics at the time claimed that Luce's paintings were steeped in political ideology. But his beautiful depiction of Paris by night, Le Louvre et le Pont du Carrousel la Nuit, is typical of the lyrical nature of much of his work.

Maximilien Luce, The Louvre at the Pont du Carrousel at Night, 1890. 

Signac also found ready allies in the Belgian avant-garde group, Les XX or "The Twenty." These gifted, forward-looking Belgians had in fact sought to establish ties with Seurat and Signac from the very beginning. Emil Verhaeren, one of the leading art critics in Belgium, visited the Eighth Impressionist exhibition and sent word about La Grande Jatte back to Brussels.

Octave Maus, the secretary of Les XX, did not need much convincing. Maus called Seurat “the Messiah of a new art.” A year after the last Impressionist exhibit, Seurat was invited to exhibit with the Belgian group and Signac followed in 1888. 

Willy Finch, Georges Lemmen and Théo van Rysselberghe responded with alacrity to seeing La Grande Jatte. They changed their personal painting styles to embrace Pointillism but were ambitious to make their own mark. Lemmen and van Rysselberghe, talented portrait painters, made a concerted effort to adapt Pointillism to capturing the outward likeness and the inner being of those around them.

Georges Lemmen, Portrait of Jan Toorop, 1886.

Lemmen's Portrait of Jan Toorop was one of the first Neo-Impressionist portraits. The subject was a Dutch Neo-Impressionist whose vivid pointillist landscape Broek in Waterland (1889) is displayed in the exhibit. Lemmen captured the prosaic pipe-smoking reality of daily life, while evoking the ineffable mystery that is inside each person.

The Phillips exhibition also displays van Rysselberghe's Portrait of Irma Sethe. This magnificent full-length portrait not only depicts a young woman absorbed in playing a violin but it brilliantly evokes the process of listening to music in the partly-obscured figure in the background.

Despite these accomplishments, Pointillism did not lend itself to portraiture.  By 1895, Lemmen moved to a style that was more in line with Impressionism. Van Rysselberghe persisted with Pointillism for nearly a decade more. A very close friend of Signac, he joined the circle of painters that based themselves around Signac's home at St. Tropez, still a minor fishing village on the Mediterranean coast. Eventually, van Rysselberghe relegated Pointillism to details of his work but no longer focused upon it as his preferred style.

Studying van Rysselberghe's  paintings, especially the portraits, one gets the sense that he was drawn to Pointillism because this demanding and difficult style was a bracing challenge to his abundant talents.

Theo van Rysselberghe, Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), 1894.

In his Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), painted in 1894, van Rysselberghe contradicted the theories on the use of complementary colors that were at the very heart of Neo-Impressionist doctrine. Where Signac had produced a text-book example of balancing dots of blue with gold and orange in his scene of fishing boats discussed above, van Rysselberghe used tones of blue and green, non-complementary colors. Yet, Canal in Flanders is an entirely successful example of Pointillism.

Signac succeeded in establishing a "Studio of the South"  at St. Tropez such as Vincent Van Gogh had tried and failed  to create at Arles a few years before. Van Rysselberghe, Luce  and another close friend, Henri-Edmond Cross, joined him on the Côte d'Azur, painting idyllic scenes of life lived in harmony with nature. 

Henri-Edmond Cross, Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), 1891-92.

Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), painted by Cross, is an almost perfect embodiment of later Neo-Impressionism at its best. The painting  also illustrates the appeal of the pastoral tradition in nineteenth century Europe, beset as it was by the baneful consequences of industrialism. The Arcadia of these innocent children, enjoying the pleasures of a golden afternoon by the sea, represented a world that was swiftly passing away.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Neo-Impressionism's day was nearly done. But before it yielded center stage to new artistic visions, the color-dappled oeuvre of Seurat and Signac produced one more surprise. 

In 1904, a struggling artist from the north of France came down to St. Tropez at Signac's invitation. Although he would only paint one great work in the pointillist style, this painting triggered the artistic breakthrough that led in due course to the "Shock of the New" art of the twentieth century.

This painting, which Signac bought, now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay. It is entitled Luxe, Calme et Volupté and the man who painted it was named Henri Matisse.

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Phillips Collection, Washington. D.C.

Introductory Image:                                                                                                         Paul Signac, Place des Lices, St. Tropez, 1893. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Family. Photograph © 2014 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888. Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 32 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.21

Georges Seurat, Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887. Black and blue chalk, white and
pink gouache, pencil and brown ink on paper 11 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Albert Dubois-Pillet, Little Circus Camp, n.d. Oil on canvas, 10 3/4 x 16 1/8 in. Acquired 1927. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Paul Signac, Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221 from the series The Sea, The Boats, Concarneau, 1891. Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Maximilien Luce, The Louvre at the Pont du Carrousel at Night, 1890. Oil on canvas, 25 x 32 in. Private Collection

Georges Lemmen, Portrait of Jan Toorop, 1886. Chalk on paper, 23 x 17 in. Collection Museum de Fundatie, Heino/Wijhe en Zwolle, The Netherlands

Theo van Rysselberghe, Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), 1894. Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 31 1/2 in. Private collection

Henri-Edmond Cross, Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), 1891-92. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 36 3/8 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, L. L. and A. S. Coburn, and Bette and Neison Harris funds; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection; through prior acquisition of the Kate L. Brewster Collection