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.