Realism And Impressionism In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Prior to the Salon des Rufusés Edouard Manet had little or no knowledge of Claude Monet, who was seven years his junior, but now the similarity between their names and the abuse showered upon both drew the two men together. Through Monet, Manet came to know Renoir and Sisley, who had been fellow-students with Monet in the studio of Gleyre, Whistler’s master, and this group was joined, among others, by two older artists, Camille Pissaro and Degas. As in the case of the Pre-Raphaelites, it was friendship and unjust derision which created the solidarity of the Impressionists, though the individual painters had by no means identical aims. Manet, we now realize, was far more a Realist than an Impressionist, and it is important to remember that he passed as an innovator years before Impressionism existed or was even thought of. Itr was more then ten years after the Salon des Refusés before Manet became influenced by the new ideas of color evolved by Pissaro, Monet, and Renoir. In his fine portrait ‘Le Bon Bock’, painted in 1873, Manet still reveals himself as the heir, not only of Courbet, but of Velazquez, Hals, and Goya. Nothing could be further from the once popular notion of an ‘Impressionist’ picture as a daub hastily put together, than this careful, if unconventional, portrait of his friend the engraver Belot enjoying a glass of beer. M Belot gave Manet no less than eighty sittings before this portrait was finished. It is freer than Courbet, with a greater simplifying of planes and values, but it is no revolution, it is a continuation and development of Courbet’s realism.

Quite different in style is ‘A Bar at the Folies—Bergère’, painted in 1882. We may say at once that the chief difference between the two pictures is in the color, for—to borrow a term from the wine-list—the color in ‘Le Bon Bock’ is ‘still’, while that in the ‘Bar’ picture is ‘sparkling’, sparkling especially in the wonderful painting of the bottles and glasses as we may see even in a photograph. Both pictures are magnificent, both are marvelously lifelike, but in the second there is a more searching pursuit of color, in shadow as well as in light, and a more vivacious statement of its actuality. In a word, it is a typical ‘Impressionist’ picture: and here we may well pause to inquire what is meant by ‘Impressionism’.

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