Realism And Impressionism In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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Manet was the heir of Courbet with this difference, that the temper of his art was more aristrocratic. He also built up his pictures by the direct application of planes of color rather than by working up an underpainting based on linear design and light-and-shade; he also used the blonde palette of Velazquez and Hals, and he also chose his subjects from the life around him; but he painted the people and life of the middle-classes, while Courbet had concentrated on the proletariat.

Edouard Manet was born at Paris in 1833. His father was a magistrate and, like Manet was originally destined for the bar, but he eventually overcame family opposition, and when he was about eighteen he was permitted to enter the studio of Couture (1815-79). Thomas Couture was an accomplished artist whose rich colored paintings were a discreet compromise between Romanticism and Classicism, but his orthodox instruction appealed little to Manet, who from the beginning desired to observe Nature closely and reproduce it according to his own feeling. After traveling in Germany, Austria, and Italy to study the Old Masters, Manet finally found in the paintings by Velazquez and Goya at the Louvre the answer to all his questionings and aspirations for light and truth. Influenced by these masters and by the example of Courbet, he gradually evolved a new technique which presented modern aspects by modern methods. Observing how one color melted into another in nature, he declared ‘There are no lines in Nature,’ and in his pictures he abandoned the convention of the outline and shaped his forms by a modelling obtained by subtle gradations of tints which fused into one another. The problem of just illumination was to Manet a matter of primary importance. Once when he was asked to point out the principal figure in a group he had painted, he made a reply that has become historic. ‘The principal person in a picture,’ said Manet, ‘is the light.’

Manet made his first appearance at the Salon in 1861 with a portrait of himself and his young wife and another paiting, ‘The Spanish Guitar-player.’ Over both the cry of ‘Realism’ was raised, and Realism was unpopular at the moment, nevertheless the Jury, inspired by Delacroix, gave Manet an Honorable Mention. But during the next two years the partisans of the classical tradition obtained the upper hand agian, and Manet was excluded from the Salon of 1863. So many artists of admitted talent, however unpopular, had their works rejected en bloc by the Salon jury this year, that the Emperor, Napoleon III, inspired by a praiseworthy liberal thought, insisted that these innovators should at least have the right to exhibit together in a special room. Thus there came into being what was known as the Salon des Refusés: among the exhibitors there, in addition to Manet and Whistler, were Alphonse Legros, Fantin Latour (1836-1904), celebrated both as a portraitist and as a painter of flowers, Harpignies, Renoir, Claude Monet, and many others who have since become famous. One of the paintings in this exhibition, a sunset by Claude Monet, entitled ‘Impressions’, excited much laughter among the crowd that came to jeer at the ‘rejected’, and henceforward the custom arose of alluding to the new school of painters as ‘Impressionists’. Originating as a term of derision, the word remained in use, and the painters to whom it was applied adopted it as an official label which would serve, as well as any other, to cover their varied aims.

Realism And Impressionism In France (continued)