Dewhurst Impressionist Painting Its Genesis and Development

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-088-8
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 181 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Excerpt: ?It may perhaps be interesting to the readers of this book to give a short account of its origin. From the earliest days of my pupilage to art I had been instinctively drawn towards the paintings of Turner, Corot, Constable, Bonington, and Watts, with an intense admiration for their manner in viewing, and methods of recreating, nature upon their canvases; and in later years I had been fascinated by the works of more modern artists, such as La Thangue, George Clausen, Edward Stott, and Robert Meyerheim. In 1891, a student in Paris, I found myself face to face with a beautiful development of landscape painting, which was quite new to me. ?Impressionism,? together with its numerous progeny of eccentric offshoots, was at the time causing a great furore in the schools. Curiously enough I had been charged with copying Monet?s style long before I had seen his actual work, so that my conversion into an enthusiastic Impressionist was short, in fact, an instantaneous process.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dewhurst, Wynford

Leseproben

CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IMPRESSIONISTIC IDEA
“L’IMPRESSIONISME, ELLE EST DIGNE DE NOTRE ADMIRATIVE ATTENTION, ET NOUS POUVONS RATIONNELLEMENT CROIRE QUE, AUX YEUX DES GÉNÉRATIONS FUTURES, ELLE JUSTIFIERA CETTE FIN DE SIÈCLE DANS L’HISTOIRE GÉNÉRALE DE L’ART” GEORGES LECOMTE ALTHOUGH the great revolution of 1793 changed the whole face of France both politically and socially, it failed to emancipate the twin arts of painting and literature. In each case one tradition was succeeded by another, and nearly forty years elapsed before the new spirit completely broke through the barriers set up by a past generation. In literature the victory was complete. The reason is easy to discover. The smart dramatist and the young novelist are always more likely to catch the fickle taste of the uneducated public than the budding painter, who depends to a great extent for his appreciation upon the trained and generally prejudiced eye of a connoisseur. There is another reason for the success of the Romantic School in literature. The majority of its leaders lived to extreme old age, and were themselves able to correct their youthful extravagances. Hugo, Dumas, Gautier (to mention but three) went down to their graves in honour. They had outlived the antagonisms of their early days, and no man dared to raise his voice in protest against poets who had added fresh laurels to the glory of France. The world of art was less fortunate. Many of the younger men barely lived through the first flush of youth. Destroying Death is the worst enemy to the arts. It is idle to imagine the changes which must have ensued had Géricault and Bonington reached the Psalmist’s allotted span. The unnatural union of Classical traditions with the yeast of Romanticism might not have taken place. Such artists as Delaroche and Couture would have dropped into the background, and there would have been less reason for the revolt of Edouard Manet. It is possible that Claude Monet might have been forestalled. Surely, Impressionism would have come to us in another shape from different easels. In any event it was bound to arrive, for a French artist had already struck the note nearly a century and a half before. The schools of painting which flourished under the last three Capet kings lacked many of the essentials of truly great art. But they possessed qualities, which the Classicalists despised, and the Romanticists never reached in exactly the same way. They possessed a strong sense of colour. Watteau, in particular, was the first to catch the sunlight. The painters of “les fêtes galantes” are artificial, unreal, dominated by mannerisms. But the cold inanities of David, Girodet, Gérard, and Gros are no more to be compared with them than the bituminous melodramatics of the lesser Romantic artists. Watteau’s successors never entirely lost their master’s sense of light and colour. In a mild way Chardin attempted realism. Boucher, and, later, Fragonard were influenced by that Japanese art which was to take such a prominent place in the movement of a hundred years later. But the world altered. The stern, hard ideals of Rome and Greece were too severe for these poor triflers with the Orient. David reigned supreme. The Journal de l’Empire considered Boucher ridiculous. Unhappy, forgotten Fragonard, surely one of the most pathetic of figures, died in poverty whilst the drums of Austerlitz were still reverberating through the air. Ingres, a pupil of David, taught his students that draughtsmanship was of more importance than colour. “A thing well drawn,” he said, “is always well enough painted.” Such teaching was bound to provoke dissent, and the germs of the coming revolution were to cross from England. Byron and Scott were the sources of the literary revolution which swept across Europe. British artists showed the way in the fight against tradition and form, which resulted in the School of Barbizon, and its great successor, the School of Impressionism. Excluding the miniaturists, and such foreign masters as Holbein, Vandyck, Kneller, and Lely, English art could hardly boast one hundred consecutive years of history when its landscape artists first exhibited in the Paris Salon. The French School could not forget Italy and its own past. Even to this day the entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts is guarded by two colossal busts of Poujet and Poussin, and the supreme prize in its gift is the Prix de Rome. But English art has never been trammelled excessively by its own past, simply because it did not possess one, and, with insular pride, refused to accept that of the Continent. Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co.
PETWORTH PARK · J. M. W. TURNER Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co.
THE CORN FIELD · J. CONSTABLE Hogarth is a case in point. His education was slight and desultory; he did not indulge in the Grand Tour; he professed a truly British scorn for foreigners, uttering “blasphemous expressions against the divinity even of Raphael, Correggio, and Michelangelo.” He took his subjects from the life which daily surged under his windows in Leicester Square, and when he attempted a classical composition he utterly failed, and was promptly told so by his numerous enemies. His canvases form historical records of the men and women of the early Georgian era, in much the same manner as Edouard Manet represents the “noceurs” and “cocottes” who wrecked the Second Empire and reappeared during the first decade of the Third Republic. Hogarth was a colourist, and the early English School was always one of colour and animation, attempting to follow Nature as closely as possible. Some of the slighter portrait studies of Sir Joshua Reynolds have a strong affinity to the work of the French Impressionists. Richard Wilson was not altogether blind to the beautiful world around him, although he considered an English landscape always improved by a Grecian temple. Gainsborough was decidedly no formalist, and whilst the lifeless group, comprising Barry, West, Fuseli, and Northcote, was endeavouring to inculcate the classical idea, the English Water-colour School began to appear, the Norwich School was in the distance, Turner’s wonderful career had commenced, and Constable, the handsome boy from Suffolk, was studying atmospheric effects and the play of sunlight from the windows of his father’s mill at Bergholt. In 1819 Géricault, one of the leaders of the reaction in France against Classicalism, paid a visit to England. He does not seem to have been greatly influenced by English work, owing no doubt to his lamentably early death. But his visit resulted in Constable and Bonington becoming known in France. For years English painters exhibited regularly at the Salon. In 1822, the year when Delacroix hung Dante’s Bark, Bonington exhibited the View of Lillebonne and a View of Havre, whilst other Englishmen exhibiting were Copley Fielding, John Varley, and Robson. In 1824 the Englishmen were still more prominent. John Constable received the Gold Medal from Charles X. for the Hay Wain (now in the London National Gallery), and exhibited in company with Bonington, Copley Fielding, Harding, Samuel Prout, and Varley. In 1827 Constable exhibited for the last time, and, curious omen for the future, between the frames of Constable and Bonington was hung a canvas by a young painter who had never been accepted by the Salon before. His name was Corot, and he was quite unknown. The influence of these Englishmen upon French painting during the nineteenth century is one of the most striking episodes in the history of art. They were animated by a new spirit, the spirit of sincerity and truth. The French landscape group of 1830, which embraced such giants as Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny, was the direct result of Constable’s power. The path was made ready for Manet, who, though not a “paysagiste,” became the head of the group which included Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro. Forty years later the younger men sought fresh inspiration in the works of an Englishman. Indirectly, Impressionism owes its birth to Constable; and its ultimate glory, the works of Claude Monet, is profoundly inspired by the genius of Turner. When the principles which animated these epoch-making English artists are contrasted with those which ruled the Impressionists, their resemblance is found to be strong. “There is room enough for a natural painter,” wrote Constable to a friend after visiting an exhibition which had bored him. “Come and see sincere works,” wrote Manet in his catalogue. “Tone is the most seductive and inviting quality a picture can possess,” said Constable. It cannot be too clearly understood that the Impressionistic idea is of English birth. Originated by Constable, Turner, Bonington, and some members of the Norwich School, like most innovators they found their practice to be in advance of the age. British artists did not fully grasp the significance of their work, and failed to profit by their valuable discoveries. It was not the first brilliant idea which, evolved in England, has had to cross the Channel for due appreciation, for appreciated it certainly was not in the country of its origin. As the genius of the dying Turner flickered out, English art reached its deepest degradation. The official art of the Great Exhibition of 1851 has become a byword and a reproach. In English minds it stands for everything that is insincere, unreal, tawdry, and trivial. The group of pre-Raphaelites, brilliantly gifted as they undoubtedly were, worked upon a foundation of...