Part 6

Impressionism, though analytic and self-conscious, was not based on science. One may look in vain for parallels between its theories and those of Dove, Thomas Young and Chevreul. It was the imitation, pure and simple, of the disintegrations of colour in nature's broad planes. And this achievement of _diversity in simplicity_ was brought about by the only method possible:--the juxtaposition of myriad tints. In other words, Impressionism was a statement that vision is the result of colour forces coming into contact with the retina. However, the men of the movement did not see nature as an agglomeration of coloured spots, but as a series of planes made vibrant by light. To reproduce this vibration they were necessitated to use nature's methods: they broke up surfaces into sensitive parts, each one of which was a separate tint. There are no broad planes of unified colour in nature. In each natural atom are absorption and reflection; and the preponderance of either of these two attributes results in a specific colour. Before the advent of this new school painters had made warm or cold green by combining green with yellow ochre or raw sienna, or by the admixture of blues and purples. But the Impressionists laid on these colours, pure or modified, side by side, and let the eye do the work of blending. They discovered not only that in green the shadow is tinged with blue, but that blue is the direct result of the yellow-orange of light. Every one nowadays has noticed that, in looking fixedly at a green, it appears now bluish, now yellowish; just as in listening to an orchestra we can, by focusing our attention, hear predominantly the bass or the treble. So the Impressionists observed that in the most luminous colour there is a proportion of absorption, and that in the darkest shadow there exists some reflection. The association of these molecular properties is what produces vibration in nature. By the application of these observations the Impressionists generated a feeling of _grouillement_;--the movement by contrast in the smallest parts.

In attempting to explain their canvases many commentators have credited them with systems of complementaries which resulted in grey, and with other exorbitant theories of oppositions. But one may look in vain in their work for any synthesis of scientific discoveries. Colour, not neutrality, was their aim; and, as they themselves admitted, they painted _comme l'oiseau chante_. Birds are not conscious of the metallic dissonance of diminished fifths; and the Impressionists were equally unaware of the harshness of red with green, blue with orange, yellow with violet. They only substituted a balance of cold and warm colours for the balance of lines which the older painters had used. They copied the tints they found in nature after analysing nature's processes, in order to arrive closer to its visual effect. In one way they almost achieved colour photography, for their study, in its narrow character, was deep, and their vision was highly realistic. But whereas they depicted nature, they could call it up only in its instantaneous aspects. In this ephemerality alone were they impressionists; indeed, their methods were the most exact and probing of any painters of that time. Each hour of the day raises or lowers the colour values in nature; and he who would copy nature's form as a permanent interpretation must ignore the exactitude of its reflections and approximate only to its local colours. This latter method is more truly impressionism than the theories of the Impressionists. They repudiated local colours as being too illusory, holding that the most highly coloured object modifies its tint under the influence of the least variation of light. The point is technically true, but it is an observation in objective research, and the word Impressionism must not be accepted as explanatory of the methods of the school it designates.

By decomposing the parts of a surface, in order to represent objects in their atmospheric materiality, the Impressionists were impelled by a force stronger than a mere desire for superficial accuracy: they felt the need for complete and minute organisation in a work of art. In landscape, where the many accidentals appeared to lack cohesion, the Impressionists achieved co-ordination by a unity of light which welded all the objects into an interdependent group. Plasticity of form had resulted from the efforts of preceding painters, but here for the first time was a plasticity of method which moulded itself like putty with the slightest change of illumination. Preoccupation in this new compositional element made its users forget, for the time being, the older precepts for obtaining composition. This forgetfulness however was not due entirely to exuberance over a novel procedure. The painters antecedent to Delacroix had used landscape as unimportant backgrounds for figures, and there was no precedent for its adaptation to organisation. Courbet had composed landscape by the linear balance of black and white volumes. The Barbizon artists had brought out-of-door painting into more general notice; but their greys were insufficient to give it more than a factitious and purely conventional unity. The Impressionists, feeling the urgency for a more virile expression in landscape work, saw a solution to their problem in the depiction of light through colour. Thus their conceptions took birth.

Their technique, like Manet's, was wholly consistent with their objective. To the Impressionists this objective seemed possessed of the merit of finality. Since Corot had carried painting out of doors and Manet had portrayed studio light from every vantage point, what indeed was left for this new group of men? They might have organised Manet or Corot, but even the most competent of such modifications would have presented an appearance like that of a Rubens or a Tiepolo. They were too avid for genuine novelty to content themselves with slight innovation; and they were too modern to derive satisfaction from the stereotyped teachings of an antiquity whose tones were unemotional and whose themes were hackneyed. The spirit of servility which is willing to learn second-hand lessons and adopt indoor conceptions spelled decadence to them. Their attitude was a healthy and correct one, for the cup of linear tone-composition had been drained. They were wrong in that they threw aside the cup: they should have filled it with more powerful concepts. Their attitude was indicative of immaturity. The Impressionists in truth were the adolescents of the modern art which was born with Delacroix and Turner, and which only recently has become a concrete engine for the projection of inspiration into an infinity of possibilities.

Impressionism was more important than any preceding departure, for it turned the thoughts of artists from mere results to motivating forces, from the ripples on the surface to the power which causes the tides. It foreshadowed the philosophical idea in art which concerns itself with causes rather than effects, and thereby brought about a fundamental reform which made of painting, not a mere vision, but an idea. The Impressionists, it is true, worked from the surface down, but they had the depths ever in mind; and the posing of their problem set in motion in all serious painters that intellectual process which eventually would begin with foundations and build upward. Impressionism was the undeniable implication that the possibilities of the older art methods had been exhausted, and that a substitution of a new method, however fragmentary, was of greater importance than the sycophantic imitations of an unapproachable past. Beneath this attitude we feel the broadness of mind which, when a mistake has been made, does not ignore causes but attaches to them different interpretations in an effort to arrive at the truth. The Impressionists kept their palette intact; but they employed its parts in a way that made new combinations possible. By doing this they unconsciously reacted against the mere dexterity of brushing with which so many painters, like Hals, Velazquez and Raeburn, became obsessed and, as a consequence, failed to heed the deeper demands of aesthetic research. By thus facilitating technique they not only reduced the difficulties attached to the production of a picture, but made the thing expressed of greater relative significance.

Pissarro, Monet, Sisley and Guillaumin who, with Bazille, composed the original group of Impressionists, had all been influenced in youth by the revolutionary doctrines of Corot and Courbet, and to a great extent had adopted the palette of these two men. Landscape painting at that time was almost a new development, and these four readily succumbed to its inspiration. There is little of the strictly picturesque and still less of the grandiose in the French landscape. Consequently a school which worked along the line of old conventions could not have existed in France. But when Rousseau and Diaz, striking out in a new direction, poetised the charm of the hills and forests about Fontainebleau, the painting of the out-of-doors was liberated both as to purpose and to freedom of arrangement. The object of Turner's work had been to astonish and charm the spectator with nature's vastness and complexity. But, with the men of 1830, landscape art took on softness, introspection, stillness, solemnity. In fine, it became more intimate. Each tree and stone hid a nymph; each stream and hill, a mystery. With the Impressionists all this was changed. They had seen and admired the work of Manet. They applauded his reactions against studio lighting, and later became his personal friends. Manet was then the cynosure of all eyes in the art world of Paris, and it was only natural that he should have been the dominating figure in a sort of _cenacle_ held in the Cafe Guerbois in the quarter of the Batignolles. Here the revolutionists of the day forgathered, and, by their uncompromising spirit, inspired one another to practical protestations against the routine of the academies. Manet's eloquence argued away the older idea of lighting as a type; and the younger men, using this negotiation as a starting point, gave birth to the methods which congealed into Impressionism.

Although Monet and Pissarro were the first to profit by Manet's teachings, there is no definite history to tell who was the first of the group to blossom into colour. However, there is little doubt that Pissarro was the man. He was a Jew with a philosophic turn of mind, and possessed more genuine intelligence than his confreres. Monet was the cleverest and the most enthusiastic, and when the new process was outlined it was he who first developed it to its ultimate consequences. Pissarro, compared with Monet, was conservative, and his practicality did not permit him so great an _elan_. His canvases beside those of Monet's appear almost tentative, and the greys he had adopted from Corot never entirely forsook him. Both these painters went to London during the Franco-Prussian War, and we may take it for granted that the works of Turner had an enormous influence on them. They had already seen Jongkind who, despite his adherence to the sombre greys of the older men, had, five years previous, more than foreshadowed the later divisionistic technique. But in Turner they discovered not only all that Jongkind had to offer, but the additional quality of joyous and dazzling colour. After their return their palettes became rapidly cleaner.

In 1874, in an effort to bestir the public, the Impressionists held an exhibition. The excitement was all they could have desired, but it led rather to obloquy than to sales. Again and again they exposed in the hope of obtaining recognition, but not until 1888 were they successful. The average spectator did not recognise nature in their canvases. The vision was an unusual one, and bore but slight resemblance to what had gone before. But gradually things underwent a change. Friends of the Impressionists launched a campaign of proselytising. Now and then a picture was sold to a collector; formerly restaurant keepers and bricklayers had been the only buyers of their work. The popular press softened its criticisms and in many instances went so far as to defend their pictures. As a result of these numerous indications of a growing approval among connoisseurs, the public, that almost immovable mass of reactionary impulses, began to look with favour on the new works it had so recently ridiculed. The great majority of people had cared only for such canvases as those in which the intellect might jump from one familiar object to another, recognising it wholly, comprehending its uses, but without giving thought to its meaning. Being thus interested primarily in a picture's conventionally painted details, they were opposed to any innovations which tended to obscure the actualities of delineation. Later their attitude, influenced by acts of authoritative sanction, relaxed. Instead of seeing, as formerly, only a series of raucously coloured spots in these new pictures, the public began to sense the deep reverence for nature that emanated from them. Thus has it always been the case with art: appreciation for anything newly vital lags far behind the achievement.

The true significance of Impressionism, however--like the true significance of all emotion-provoking art--remained undiscovered to the general. When the mean intelligence of mankind brings itself to bear on a work of art, it applies itself through the channels of literature, archaeology, photography, botany, mineralogy and physiology. To be a popular artist a painter must be something of a professor in all these sciences. With all other considerations--such as psychology and aesthetics--he need not trouble himself. The public, even after centuries of rigorous training and constant association with art, is no nearer a comprehension of rhythmic ensembles--perfectly synthesised form in three dimensions--than it was during the Renaissance. The two major requisites to an understanding of the formal relations in momentous art are a highly developed sensitivity and an active intelligence. An eye and a nervous system are not enough. Society as a whole may, after a long course of training and sedulous study, reach that perceptive point where it can grasp the simple aesthetic hypothesis founded on two dimensions. But such a hypothesis is but a beginning. It embraces only the rudimentary aesthetic organisations that are found in Japanese art, the works of the Byzantine masters, the primitives of France and the pictures of Botticelli, Manet and Gauguin. The form in art of this kind is, strictly speaking, not form at all. It is balance, harmonious rhythm, linear adjustment, parallelism, co-ordinated silhouette, sensitive arrangement, outline melody--in fact, whatever is possible in two dimensions. Significant form must move in depth--backward and forward, as well as from side to side. Furthermore it must imply an infinity of depth. This third (and sometimes fourth) dimension informs all truly great art.

While the Impressionists did not attain to depth in the aesthetic connotation of the word, they nevertheless went beyond mere linear balance, for by the means of a higher emotional element--light--they organised, in a superficial manner, all the objects in their canvases. There were no dissevered objects, unrelated backgrounds, no concessions to the hagiographa or other literature. What chance, therefore, had they of being understood? Their subject-matter was too abstract; their effects were too general. No line was accentuated above another. There were no modifications to achieve vastness or splendour. Impressionism was the unadulterated reproduction of atmosphere, the smile or frown of a mood in nature. It is small wonder that the unaesthetic found it obscure: in it there was too much rapture, too much frankness, too much exultation in mere living, and too little restraint. It was the false dawn in the great modern Renaissance of colour--the most ecstatically joyful style of painting the world has ever seen. It was feminine in that it was a reflection, and its hysteria may also be attributed to this fact. The Impressionists seated themselves, free from all trammels, before the face of nature. Nature dictated: they transcribed. Nature smiled; and they, completely blent with it, smiled also. This very enthusiasm is what kept them young and held them to their initial path. To paint as they did was an intoxication, subtler and stronger than a drug and more elating than young love.

The vital history of the individual men who formed this group reduces itself to a record of their temperamental tastes in subject selection and to a statement of the degree to which each developed the new method. The individualities of the units of an experimental school are always unimportant. Temperament can dictate to the artist only two phases of variation: what he is to use in his composition, and those transcendental qualities, such as joy and sorrow, drama and comedy, which reflect the timbre of his predispositions. Rhythm, form, balance, organisation, drawing--all these aesthetic considerations spring from deeper matrices in a man's nature than do his temperamental predilections. Whether one man is intrigued by sunlight or another by mist, mankind is, after all, so similar in externals, that one individual's slight departure from a predecessor, or his trifling deviation from a contemporary, is of little moment. The true key to a man's genius lies in his ability to organise as well as, or better than, others. The compositional figure on which he builds will alone give us the substance of his character. We are all capable of receiving sensations: we have our personal likes and dislikes for subjects, even for actions and smells. But these choices are the outgrowths of our instincts, mere habits of association. In nowise are they fundamental. They are the physiological recognition of pleasant or unpleasant impressions. Their importance is limited to the individual who experiences them. Being the results of receptivity, they have no more to do basically with the aesthetic expression of an artist whose work is pure creation, than phonograph disks with the sounds they receive. By the intelligence alone can a man be judged. Here there is order, extensive in artists like Michelangelo, partially restricted in such painters as El Greco and Giorgione, and severely limited as in the case of the Impressionists. However, it must not be implied that the intelligence alone can create. Such a contention would be preposterous; but it is true that impressions must first be consciously organised before they can be given concrete expression.

The intelligence of Pissarro was synthetic to a small extent, but not once did it exhibit signs of extended apperception. He thought clearly up to a certain point beyond which his art never went. His temperament was not an uncommon one among Hebrews. He viewed life as a social reformer who regards the world as a sad place, but one susceptible of improvement. From this psychological standpoint he painted. His pictures depict ubiquitous greys, occasionally brightened by a stream of lurid light; sombre scenes in which the impression is one of late afternoon; peasants who seem wearied of their unceasing and thankless labours; gaunt trees which epitomise the decay of the year. His technique is not dissimilar to that of Jongkind, and his drawing is allied to the construction found in the Dutch landscapists of the early nineteenth century rather than in those of his own group. That he was the transition from Jongkind to Monet is a plausible contention; in him are found qualities of both these other painters. But he was too conscientious ever to attain to the technical heights Monet reached. If one aspires to innovation of means, graphic traits have to be sacrificed: steps must be taken in the dark. Those who cling with one hand to the old while groping toward the new can never reach their desires. Pissarro's lack of constructive genius was too evident, his timidity too great, his intelligence too literal for him ever to effectuate new plastic forms. His instincts were those of a teacher, and he displayed indubitable traits of an exalted doctrinaire. But his art, with these limitations, was able and complete. Cezanne says he learned all he knew of colour from him. This is not wholly true; but it is certain that Guillaumin and Sisley are greatly indebted to his clarity of reason.

Although Pissarro is the greater artist, Monet is the finer craftsman. He is widely credited with the invention of divisionistic methods; but in this conclusion an inaccurate syllogism has played havoc with the facts. None of the Impressionists invented the _procede de la tache_; and not having invented it detracts nothing from their achievement. Liszt did not invent the pianoforte, yet he was its greatest master. The practice of crediting Frenchmen with the invention and development of methods has scant authority with which to justify itself. Poussin was an offshoot, and a weak one, of the great Titian. Watteau and Boucher come to us direct out of the corners of Rubens's pictures. Daumier and Courbet, temperamentally unrelated to the French tradition, stem from the Dutch and the Spaniards. Cezanne emanated from the Dutch and the Italians _via_ Impressionism. Matisse's procedure is little more than a modification of that of the Persians and the early Italians. Cubism was imported from Spain by a Spaniard. Futurism is strictly Italian: there is not a French name among its originators. Synchromism was brought into the world by Americans. And Impressionism, which, like all these other departures, has come to be looked upon as French, is incontrovertibly of English parentage. True, there is small credit due the inventor. The man capable of employing new discoveries (as Marconi employed the principles of wireless telegraphy) is the truly important figure. But we should not confuse discovery with employment. Since Monet was French, France has a perfect right to claim the results of colour division. The honours attaching to its discovery are Turner's and Constable's.

Monet, like many great men, had little schooling. He went direct to nature, impelled by the new impetus toward landscape. His first pictures in the Impressionist manner resemble Manet's except for trivial innovations in the differentiation of shadows; but in this difference we divine the later Monet. Viewed cursorily these paintings appear to be conventional figure pieces. But they are more than that. The figures have no other significance than that which attaches to a vase or a landscape. "Facial expression," "sympathetic gestures," the "appeal"--all are absent from them. In these pictures the costume plays the hero's part. La Japonaise is representative of that treatment of subject wherein the figure is only an excuse for a pattern of colour. The modern attitude toward theme which Manet handed down is again in evidence in Monet. Its _reductio ad absurdum_ was the late epidemic of illustrative pictures by such men as Whistler, Shannon, Sargent, Zuloaga and Alexander, the titles of which were derived from the flowers held in the hands of the principals, a bowl of goldfish in the background, or the colour of a lace shawl.