Auguste Renoir ([cover illustration] and [page 42]), whose glowing colors rivaled Monet’s, was among the first to outgrow Impressionism. This son of a Limoges tailor was earning his living at thirteen in Paris by painting flowers on china. He saved enough money to attend an academy and met Monet, with whom he often painted along the banks of the Seine. But by about 1883 he found he “had wrung Impressionism dry.” He regretted the loss of form, composition, and human values in the shimmering Impressionist pictures. Setting himself again to paint forms solidly in space, he nevertheless retained the brilliant colors of Impressionism.
Sometimes exhibiting with the Impressionists, Edgar Degas ([page 33]) was strongly influenced by their coloring and used it in realistic scenes of Paris life, the race track, and the opera ballet. Degas, son of a wealthy banker, received a thorough classical education and learned painting from a pupil of Ingres. In his compositions, he preserved a classical sense of order which was quite foreign to Impressionist aims. As he said, “No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I accomplish is the result of reflection upon and study of the old masters....” Yet he reshaped conventional ideas of composition by drawing his subjects from life and refining his outlines after the example of Japanese prints. These Oriental colored woodcuts, which also influenced Manet, Whistler, and many others, came to Paris first as wrapping in boxes of china; they were discovered by painters, who found inspiration in their simple lines and decorative flat areas of color.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ([page 35]), like Degas, saw his pictures as both realistic and decorative. As a delicate boy of fourteen he injured both his legs so that they failed to grow. His father, Count Alphonse de Toulouse, had no patience with his weakling heir, but his mother encouraged him to paint. In 1885 he turned his back upon the academic style and, taking hints from the free brushwork of the Impressionists and from Japanese designs, Lautrec began to paint his pictures of Parisian night life, circus performers, and cabaret entertainers. Degas, at first hostile toward him, eventually declared, “Well, Lautrec, I can see you are one of our trade.”
Vincent van Gogh ([page 37]) was a Dutchman who came to Paris in 1886 and met the Impressionists. He possessed a deep sincerity, but also had a difficult, flaring temper which alienated many people. After working unsuccessfully as a picture dealer, a tutor, and a lay preacher, he turned to art as a means of expressing his passionate emotions. At first he used dark, somber colors like those of his countryman Rembrandt; then seeing the Impressionists’ canvases, he adopted their brilliant colors. But their painting of merely optical impressions could not satisfy his urge for emotional expression. While he borrowed their bright palette, he used colors for emotional effects, and in his hands the broken brushwork became a nervous, intensely expressive agent to record his inner feelings. His whole remarkable career as an artist fell within the ten years before 1890, when he shot himself to escape insanity.
His friend Paul Gauguin ([page 39]) shared similar artistic aims. A wealthy Parisian stockbroker, Gauguin gave up his business and deserted his family because he felt compelled to paint. After living for a time in Brittany, he went to Tahiti and broke entirely with Impressionism. He formed a style in which his experiences and feelings were symbolized by intense colors and sweeping outlines. His art, which anticipates twentieth-century trends, was incomprehensible to his contemporaries, and he died impoverished in the Marquesas.
Paul Cézanne ([page 41]), too, is a forerunner of the moderns. Born at Aix-en-Provence, this banker’s son followed his school friend Zola to Paris. Although an extremely shy youth he soon married a model and for a time painted and exhibited with the Impressionists. But, constantly rebuffed by critics and even scorned by Zola, who failed to see any promise in his forceful early works, Cézanne withdrew to live in Provence during the 1880’s and perfected his individual style. His methods paved the way for the abstract painting of our own day. In his old age a number of young artists and critics sought him out and he enjoyed a small degree of recognition within his lifetime. His work, together with that of Manet, Monet, Degas, Lautrec, van Gogh, and Gauguin, has become the most popular painting today.
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
Napoleon in His Study
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Remarkably free from the allegorical pomposity of most official portraits, this picture presents Napoleon I with reserved dignity. The emperor himself approved it and, upon its completion in 1812, complimented David. Dressed in his favorite costume, the uniform of the chasseur de la garde with a general’s epaulettes, Napoleon wears the Legion of Honor and the Order of the Iron Cross, which commemorates his earlier coronation as king of Italy. He seems to have just risen from his desk, on which lies the Code Napoléon, the codification of French law which he promulgated.
David’s style is at its best in portraiture. Combining realism with a classicist’s respect for human dignity, he shows Napoleon in a characteristic pose but with an air of grandeur. David’s assured touch gives authority to the work by its incisive, strong handling of details. The composition is severely rectilinear; framing the figure, vertical lines descend through the pilaster and table leg at the left and, again, from the clock through Napoleon’s arm and the leg of the chair. Against these, horizontal lines, marked by the book shelves, wall molding, and desk, lend compositional stability. The diagonal lines of the chair are countered by the diagonal arrangement of the map and book on the floor. Before this orderly grid of lines Napoleon’s figure appears subtly animated.
