APPENDIX
(a) THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF IMPRESSIONISM
The clearest explanation of the scientific theory of colouring is to be found in the treatise written by Chevreul. First published in France in 1838, it met with great success, and was translated into English in 1854 by Charles Martel. Chevreul remains the standard authority, although he has been followed by Helmholtz, Church, Rood, and others.
Given the necessary competence for accuracy in draughtsmanship, and considerable practice in the manipulation of colour, the art-student may take the field, and not before; for Impressionist painting demands the highest artistic capability. Firstly, he will discover that Impressionists worship light, using the trees, rocks, rivers, &c. of landscape, as so many vehicles for the conveyance of luminous impressions to the eye. This quality of atmosphere distinguishes Impressionist pictures from all others; here will be found what Brownell, Chevreul, MacColl, and Mauclair, have to say upon the subject. Secondly, the art-student will perceive the vital necessity of correct values within a general tone, a subject also enlarged upon by the above writers. Thirdly, some reference is given to the modern study of shadows and reflections, with regard to their influence and treatment.
The following lines, extracted from “The French Impressionists,” by Camille Mauclair, sum up definitely the Impressionist Idea.
“In nature no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the objects is a pure illusion: the only creative source of colour is the sunlight which envelops all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with infinite modifications.... Only artificially can we distinguish between outline and colour; in nature the distinction does not exist.... A value is the degree of dark or light intensity, which permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer than another.... The values are the only means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. Colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. Colour being simply the irradiation of light, it follows that all colour is composed of the same elements as sunlight, namely the seven tones of the spectrum.... The colours vary with the intensity of light. There is no colour peculiar to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its surface. The speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or oblique direction, give different light and colour.... What has to be studied therefore in these objects, if one wishes to recall their colour to the beholder of a picture, is the composition of the atmosphere which separates them from the eye. This atmosphere is the real subject of the picture, and whatever is represented upon it only exists through its medium. A second consequence of this analysis of light is, that shadow is not absence of light, but light of a different quality and of different value. Shadow is not a part of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinate to a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed. The third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are modified by refraction.... The colours mixed on the palette compose a dirty grey.... Here we touch on the very foundations of Impressionism. The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others; that is what Claude Monet has done boldly, adding to them only black and white. He will, furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place on his canvas touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed, and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight itself upon the eye of the beholder.”
Camille Mauclair.
(“The French Impressionists.”)
“Take a landscape with a cloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is the effect when considerable portions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intense light? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised? Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast between sunlight and shadow in proper scales, the painter would have painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared. Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, is raised infinitely less than the value of the parts in sunlight. Absolutely their value is raised considerably. If therefore they are painted lighter than they were before the sun appeared, they in themselves seem true. The part of Monet’s picture that is in shadow is measurably true, far truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express the relations of contrast between shadow and sunlight. Scale has been lost. What has been gained? Simply truth of impressionistic effect. Why? Because we know and judge and appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects in shadow are represented; we are insensibly more familiar with them in nature than with objects directly sun-illuminated, the value as well as the definition of which are far vaguer to us on account of their blending and infinite heightening by a luminosity absolutely overpowering. In a word, in sunlit landscapes objects in shadow are what customarily and unconsciously we see and note and know, and the illusion is greater if the relation between them and the objects in sunlight, whose value habitually we do not note, be neglected or falsified. Add to this source of illusion the success of Monet in giving a juster value to the sunlit half of his picture than has ever been systematically attempted before his time, and his astonishing ‘trompe d’œil’ is, I think, explained. Each part is truer than ever before, and unless one have a specially developed sense of ‘ensemble’ in this very special matter of values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet an impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before, that one may be pardoned for feeling, and even for enthusiastically proclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its apogee. Monet paints absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as pigments can be got to represent it.”
W. C. Brownell.
(“Realistic Painting.”)
“Impressionism is the art that surveys the field and determines which of the shapes and tones are of chief importance to the interested eye, enforces these, and sacrifices the rest.
“If three objects, A, B, and C, stand at different depths before the eye, we can at will fix A, whereupon B and C must fall out of focus, or B, whereupon A and C must be blurred, or C, sacrificing the clearness of A and B. All this apparatus makes it impossible to see everything at once with equal clearness, enables us, and forces us for the uses of real life, to frame and limit our picture, according to the immediate interest of the eye, whatever it may be.
“The painter instinctively uses these means to arrive at the emphasis and neglect that his choice requires. If he is engaged on a face he will screw his attention to a part and now relax it, distributing the attention over the whole so as to restore the bigger relations of aspect.
“Sir J. Reynolds describes this process as seeing the whole ‘with the dilated eye;’ the commoner precept of the studios is, ‘to look with the eyes half closed.’ In any case the result is the minor planes are swamped in bigger, that smaller patches of colour are swept up into broader, that markings are blurred.
“The Impressionist painter does not allot so much detail to a face in a full-length portrait as to a head alone, nor to twenty figures on a canvas as to one.”
D. S. MacColl.
(“Encyclopædia Britannica.”)
“The discovery of these Impressionists consists in having thoroughly understood the fact that strong light discolours tones, and that sunlight reflected by the various objects in nature, tends from its very strength of light to bring them all up to one uniform degree of luminosity, which dissolves the seven prismatic rays in one single colourless lustre, which is the light.... Impressionism, in those works which represent it at its best, is a kind of painting which tends towards phenomenism, towards the visibility and the signification of things in space, and which wishes to grasp the synthesis of things as seen in a momentary glimpse.... One has now the right to say, without provoking an outcry, that it has been given to the people of the present time to witness a magnificent and phenomenal artistic evolution by this succession of canvases painted by Claude Monet during the past twenty years.”
Geffroy.
“Two coloured surfaces in juxtaposition will exhibit the modification to the eye viewing them simultaneously, the one relative to the height of tone of their respective colours, the other relative to the physical composition of these same colours.... We must not overlook the fact, that whenever we mix pigments to represent primitive colours, we are not mixing the colours of the solar spectrum, but mixing substances which painters and dyers employ as Red, Yellow, and Blue colours.... All the primary colours gain in brilliancy and purity by the proximity of Grey.... Grey in association with sombre colours, such as Blue and Violet, and with broken tints of luminous colours, produces harmonies of analogy which have not the vigour of those with Black; if the colours do not combine well together, it has the advantage of separating them from each other.... Distant bodies are rendered sensible to the eye, only in proportion as they radiate, or reflect, or transmit the light which acts upon the retina.”
Chevreul.
“The object of landscape painting is the imitation of light in the regions of the air and on the surface of the earth and of water.... One must seek above all else in a picture for some manifestation of the artist’s spiritual state, for a portion of his reverie.... In the career of an artist, one must have conscience, self-confidence and perseverance. Thus armed the two things in my eyes of the first importance are the severe study of drawing and of values.”
Corot.
(b) SALES AND PRICES
For future comparison it will be interesting to note some results reached at recent sales of Impressionist paintings. Pictures which, in the early seventies, were unsaleable for five pounds, now average from £500 to £800 apiece, with a tendency to go much higher. A sale at New York, in December 1902, of seventeen pictures by members of the Impressionist and Barbizon schools, produced nearly £40,000, an average of £2300 for each canvas. The last great public sale by auction was “La Vente Chocquet” at the Petit Galerie, Paris, July 1, 1899. A few days previous to the sale the writer had a long conversation with Claude Monet at Giverny. Discussing the coming event, which was already exciting much press comment, Monet told how the late Père Chocquet, as he was affectionately called, a “chef du bureau” in the Department of Finance, had been a tower of strength to the early Impressionists. He encouraged them, foretold ultimate triumph, invested every franc of his savings in the purchase of their works, at prices ranging from £2 to £10. Late in life M. Chocquet inherited, quite unexpectedly, a large fortune. The Impressionists anticipated much, and the studios were jubilant. Long cherished plans were rediscussed; the Chocquet legacy was to be the source of a golden stream. But a great disappointment was to come. With the increase of M. Chocquet’s riches came the decrease and final extinction of M. Chocquet’s taste. He never bought another picture!
Throughout the three days’ sale, the gorgeous rooms of M. Georges Petit were crowded, although many well-known and wealthy buyers were absent owing to the lateness of the season. Amongst the distinguished collectors and dealers, from all parts of Europe and America, were the Counts de Camondo, Gallimard, de Castellane, the Marquis de Charnacé, the Barons Oberkampff and de Saint-Joachim, and Messieurs Degas, Cheramy, de St. Léon, de la Brunière, de Léclanché, Clerq, Muhlbacher, Ligneau, André Sinet, Antonin Proust, Escudier, Natanson, de Laivargott, Bigot, Ferrier, Marcel, Cognet, Durey, Zacharian, Moreau-Latour, Mittmann, Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, Allard, Montagnac, Vollard, Boussod, Rosemberg, and Camemtron, Monet’s La Prairie realised 6400 francs, Les Meules 9000 francs, Falaise à Varengeville 9500 francs, and La Seine à Argenteuil was knocked down to M. d’Hauterive for 11,500 francs. Renoir’s works fetched between ten and twenty thousand francs. Manet’s Portrait of Claude Monet in his Studio, which was sold after Manet’s death for 150 francs, changed hands at 10,000 francs.
At the Vever sale in 1897, Monet’s Le Pont d’Argenteuil realised 21,500 francs.
(c) SOME COLLECTORS OF IMPRESSIONIST PICTURES
The following list contains the names of the chief private collectors of Impressionist pictures. Though incomplete it will be noted that almost every country is represented:
Alexandre, M. Arsène
Astor, John Jacob
Bathmont, Madame
Béarn, Comtesse de
Bernheim, fils, M.
Blanquet, Baron
Cahen, M. Gustave
Camondo, Comte Isaac de
Chauveau, Frédéric
Cochin, M. Denis
Coquelin Frères
Curel, M. de
Decup, M.
Dupeaux, M.
Dupux, Dr.
Durand-Ruel et Fils
Duret, M. Theodore
Ephrussi, M. Chas.
Feydeau, M. M.
Forward, M.
Gachet, Dr.
Gonjon, M. S.
Havinimann, Madame
Havemeyer, M.
Hersch, M.
Hete, M. de
Hohentschel
Joubert, M.
Kakoreff
Lehrmann
Maddocks, J.
Marchant, W. S.
Marker
Marsden, S.
Mesdag
Monnier, M.
Morosoff, Ivan
Murer, M.
Paquin, M.
Pawson, T.
Pelerin, M. Auguste
Petit, M. Georges
Priestley, W. E. B.
Pripper
Ronnell, Max
Rothschild, Baronne Gustave de
Rothschild, Baron Henri de
Ruel, M.
Rous, M.
Samuel, M.
Schlesinger, M.
Schmitz, M.
Schulte, Herr
Schumann, M.
Smith, J. W.
Sota, Signor de la
Strauss, Guido
Strauss, Jacques
Strauss, Jules
Tesigmann, M.
Tschudi, Herr von
Vanderbilt
Van der Velde, M.
Vanier, M.
Viau, M. Georges
Vlieyere, M. de
Waldeck-Rousseau, M.
Wills, Sir W. H.
Zygomalco, M.
