Art

“[Modernity is] the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable”.

Charles Baudelaire

The Painter of Modern Life

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Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte came into power after the Revolution of 1848. Deposing King Louis-Phillipe, the so-called Citizen King in the “February Revolution”. Although France was briefly declared a Republic with Louis Napoleon as the President, in 1852 after a coup d’etat he became Emperor Napoleon III, ostensibly restoring a monarchy. Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous writer and political theorist wrote in his memoir of the time, “society was cut in two; those who had nothing were united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror.” Against that backdrop, Emperor Napoleon appointed Baron Georges Haussmann to remake Paris. Although the overt reason was to improve living conditions, widen roads, and improve transportation and sanitation, there was a political reason as well. Napoleon wanted the narrow, poor streets of old Paris widened to prevent future revolutionaries from constructing barricades and allowing his troops easy access on horseback to any areas to quell unrest.

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Under Haussmann’s urban renovation, the wide Parisian boulevards we know so well were constructed. New bridges were added across the Seine. Poor people who once lived in the old, medieval parts of the city were displaced and many people were displaced, taking up residence in places like Montmartre and other arrondissements located further out from the center. For those who were wealthier, the city opened up and became a place of spectacle. For the first time people could stroll, sit in outdoor cafes see, and be seen. This was inspiring for the modern painters of Paris.

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After the Revolution of 1848 Napoleon III, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte took control of power and overturning the reign of Louis Phillipe, the Orleans family heir often called the Citizen King, an oxymoron. Napoleon III quashed his political rivals by becoming Emperor and by being a strong authoritarian leader. He used the French guards to keep the peace, and ushered in a period of wealth, overseeing a huge period of growth and expansion in Paris, often at the expense of the lower classes, many of whom were displaced. His reign was characterized by lavish parties and a good time for the wealthy By 1870, having made a terrific military blunder and declared war on Prussia, he was deposed and the end of what is called the Second Empire. After a brief political struggle for power (the Paris Commune) the Third Republic was created which lasted until 1940 when Germany invaded France.

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Like Louis XIV and his uncle through marriage Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Napoleon III understood the power of art and used his power to remake Paris and to put his stamp on fashion and architectural design in Paris.

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In 1874, a group of 30 painters who called themselves Artistes Independents were refused by the official Salon—their work was not accepted for the official exhibition. The initial group including Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot decided to stage their own exhibition. Aside from the core group, the other exhibiting artists were a revolving group. Despite the fact that Impressionism is arguably one of the most popular art movements today, the work was initially not well received. A critic who saw Monet’s Impression: Sunrise at the first exhibition dubbed the work Impressionist as a scathing critique. The group continued to exhibit in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, and 1886.

Even at their fourth group exhibition in 1879 the French critic Henry Havard wrote: "I confess humbly I do not see nature as they do, never having seen these skies fluffy with pink cotton, these opaque and moiré waters, this multi-colored foliage. Maybe they do exist. I do not know them." ("L'exposition des artistes indépendants," Le Siècle, 27 April 1879.)

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Monet was a radical painter who avoided painting in the studio and working outdoors as much as possible, which we call en plein air. As you can see by the above quote, this work called Impression, Sunrise is Monet’s ”impression” of the view of the harbor at Le Havre, Monet’s boyhood home. He used short brushstrokes of pure, often unmixed color and avoided preliminary sketches in most instances. For the first time, pre-mixed paints were available allowing the painter to have portability.

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Claude Monet frequently concentrated on scenes outside Paris. Here in this painting entitled On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, we see one of the areas easily accessed outside of Paris by train. Monet’s work increasingly focused on country scenes. He moved to Argenteuil outside of Paris in 1872 which was less than ½ hour by train. Less impressionistic than the painting Impression Sunrise, Monet nevertheless suggests water, leaves, the woman on the bank, the houses in the background. This may have been his wife and this painting is another example of painting on site.

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Because railroad transportation was so highly developed in mid 19th century Paris, one could get on a train at any of the seven major stations and be in the countryside within an hour. This map highlights some of the favorites destinations of the Impressionist painters including Bennecourt, Argenteuil, Chatou and Asnieres.

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This painting by Claude Monet emphasizes light over form and even color. It depicts one of the busiest train stations in Paris, the Gare St. Lazare. Monet applies the same atmospheric lighting in this city scene as he does in his paintings of the countryside but in this work he pays tribute to the dynamic energy of the station. His friend Georges Rivière writes that the train as depicted by Monet seems like a “fiery steed” and his energetic style allows the viewer to feel the heat of the tracks, and smell the bitter smell of coal burning that fired the engine. Monet and many of his contemporaries took trains out of Paris to get away from the density of the city. In an hour or lessone could be outside the city and picnic, row, or stop at an inn along the Seine.

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In this painting by Edouard Manet, we see Claude Monet and his wife Camille on Monet’s small studio boat. Manet joined Monet in Argenteuil in the summer of 1874 and captured this scene. We see both the beautiful basin of the Seine which was so welcoming for those who wished to picnic or sail, but in the distance we also see factory smokestacks which represent the growing industrialization going on around Paris. Monet’s technique was to paint his impressions directly onto the canvas with no preliminary sketch, a technique that goes against the traditional teaching of the French Academy. On his studio boat he felt he could capture the river from a different point of view and take full advantage of the effect of light on the water something that fascinated him.

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This painting of Rouen Cathedral underscores the importance of light in Monet’s work. He did a series of this cathedral’s portal in different times and seasons in order to observe the light. He also is also known for his series of paintings of haystacks and water lilies. He did over 20 versions of Rouen Cathedral, and had nightmares about getting the lighting right. Monet wrote: ‘Things don’t advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discover something I hadn’t seen the day before… In the end, I am trying to do the impossible.’ He, like many of his contemporaries were working against traditional painting techniques and subject matter, and therefore against the official art body in Paris, the French Academy. So many painters works didn’t fit the narrow acceptable confines of the Academy that Napoleon III authorized initiated a Salon de Refusés, a place where painters like Manet, Monet, and other Impressionist artists could show their work to the public. It is hard to believe today that Impressionist paintings were often despised by the Academy jury, and by the average viewer. Today Impressionism is one of the most popular movements for museum and gallery patrons.

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The new Paris was reflected in many of the paintings by artists whose approach was considered to be modern. Here is one example by the painter Gustave Caillebotte who was inspired by the new, brighter vistas of the boulevard. Although Caillebotte stuck to more traditional painting techniques he is grouped with Impressionists because of his subject matter, the streets of Paris. This is a quintessentially urban scene, the city on a rainy day with people strolling about. The setting is the junction of a newly built boulevard designed sometime after 1852 when the city of Paris boasted 1.5 million people. One reason Napoleon III claimed the city should be renovated followed a cholera epidemic in Paris in 1849, but as previously mentioned he also wanted to be able to disperse troops easily in case of any uprising against him. The central couple, presumably a man and his wife look at others on the streets and perhaps at the shop windows. The cutting off of the figure on the far right gives the viewer a sense of people walking rapidly in and out of their view, as would happen on a busy street. While many artists celebrated the light of the newly renovated streets, other complained the streets were too grand and impersonal after Haussmann redesigned them. It is hard to say if this is the message of the painting, or if Caillebotte is celebrating the fact that people can stroll, see and be seen, and mingle among a variety of people from all classes.

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In this painting by Camille Pissarro entitled La Place du Theatre Français, you see the wide boulevard teaming with life. There are commercial wagons, public transport vehicles, private cabs and pedestrians. Photography helped artists like Pissarro and Caillebotte frame their compositions. Pissarro was born in the West Indies and settled in Paris, he captured this scene from a window several stories above the square. Pissarro, like other painters of the time sometimes used photographs as reference material, a way to capture a fleeting scene. We will discuss more about photography’s affect on art later. This painting also demonstrates the flattening of the picture plane which was inspired by Manet.

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Charles Baudelaire was an important poet and art critic whose best known work is the series of poems entitled Les Fleurs du Mal. He was a friend of many of the Impressionist painters and is known for having translated the work of Edgar Allan Poe into French, this making the relatively unknown American writer an international success. One of the most influential essays Baudelaire ever wrote was called The Painter of Modern Life. In this essay which was published in 1863, the same year Olympia was exhibited, he cites the work of an almost unknown painter called Contantin Guys. He argued that Guy’s work important because Guy sketched the scenes he saw around him in contemporary Paris. Baudelaire exhorted the painters he knew to do the same. He also wrote about the importance of the Flaneur. The word flaner in French means to stroll and a Flâneur is a stroller. In today’s world we might think of it as mindful strolling. In Baudelaire’s essay, the flaneur is a gentleman who walks the streets of Paris, observing life in an an almost scientific way and using his observations to draw inspiration for painting and writing or philosophical musing.

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Ask students to discuss selection in red type. What does it mean? How does it apply to art? To modernity?

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This painting by Caillebotte depicts a flaneur standing on a new steel bridge in Paris that was built in 1868 under Haussmann. It spanned over the Gare St. Lazare, a newly constructed railway station that was featured in the painting by Claude Monet.

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This is the work of Renoir entitled La moulin de la Galette, which refers to a dance hall patronized by working class people on Monmartre. This painting exemplifies the idea of the middle and working classes enjoying Sunday afternoon. At this time in Paris, there were set hours were many workers and when they had time off they congregated at places to meet with friends, dance, eat and drink. The Moulins (Windmills) of Montmartre were the remains of what had once been an agricultural area. More heavily populated after Haussmannization, this Moulin was converted into a restaurant serving galettes, a kind of pancake. Renoir’s friend George Rivière who wrote a memoir about this time describes some of the people in the painting as friends of Renoir and identifies several of them in particular. Renoir had a studio at the rue Cortot in Montmartre. This painting was purchased by Caillebotte and willed to France after his death.

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Each of the Impressionist painters focused on different areas of interest, taking to heart Baudelaire’s advice about observing contemporary life. Degas was a frequent ballet patron and painted many works that showed both the performance, and the back stage life of the ballet dancers. This work demonstrates Degas’ affinity for photography, something we will discuss more in depth later. You can see how the odd cropping of the work seems to suggest that the composition is inspired by a photograph. Degas was less concerned with light and atmosphere and preferred indoor subjects, although he did paint outdoor scenes too. Because of the influence of photography he was more interested in conveying movement and odd angles. He regularly used a camera to make preliminary studies and became interested in Japonisme, a fondness for Japanese prints.

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This great painting by Edouard Manet, one of his last great works before his death in 1883 epitomizes urbanity, and consumer culture. This painting is considered to be very enigmatic and has been written about and discussed at great length. The Folies Bergère was a fashionable place where people went to dance and watch music hall entertainment. They also congregated there to find a partner, and men often patronized the nightclub looking for a prostitute. The inconsistencies in this painting only fuel the speculation as to the meaning or intent. The reflection in the mirror and the man is spatially inaccurate, confusing or perhaps deliberately misleading. Manet may be suggesting the subject from a variety of viewpoints. The woman at the center is a poignant representation of women who had to work for a living. This woman is both self-possessed and perhaps a bit melancholy. Additionally the foreground contains a masterful still life of items that were available for purchase at the bar. However, Manet concentrates on painting in a way that underscores the tricks and deceit inherent in painting, the artifice of capturing a three dimensional scene on a two dimensional surface, to avoid illusion and to allow the viewer to see the anomalies, inconsistencies, and the painter’s process which was thoroughly modern.

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