With Violets (33 page)

“By Michalon!” he cried. “What on earth is that?” “You see . . . a hoarfrost on deeply ploughed furrows.”

“Those furrows? That frost? But they are palette-scrapings placed uniformly on a dirty canvas. It has neither head nor tail, top nor bottom, front nor back.”

“Perhaps . . . but the impression is there.”

“Well, it’s a funny impression! Oh . . . and this?”

“
An Orchard
by M. Sisley. I’d like to point out the small tree on the right; it’s gay, but the impression . . .”

“Leave me alone, now, with your impression . . . it’s neither here nor there. But here we have a
View of Melun
by M. Rouart, in which there’s something to the water. The shadow in the foreground, for instance, is really peculiar.”

“It’s the vibration of tone which astonishes you.”

“Call it the sloppiness of tone and I’d understand you better—Oh, Corot, Corot, what crimes are committed in your name! It was you who brought into fashion this messy composition, these thin washes, these mud splashes against which the art lover has been rebelling for thirty years and which he has accepted only because constrained and forced to it by your tranquil stubbornness. Once again, a drop of water has worn away the stone!”

The poor man rambled on this way quite peacefully, and nothing led me to anticipate the unfortunate accident which was to be the result of his visit to this hair-raising exhibition. He even sustained, without major injury, viewing the
Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor
by M. Claude Monet, perhaps because I tore him away from dangerous contemplation of this work before the small, noxious figures in the foreground could produce their effect.

Unfortunately, I was imprudent enough to leave him too long in front of the
Boulevard des Capucines,
by the same painter.

“Ah-ha!” he sneered in Mephistophelean manner. “Is that brilliant enough, now! There’s impression, or I don’t know what it means. Only, be so good as to tell me what those innumerable black tongue-lickings in the lower part of the picture represent?”

“Why, those are people walking along,” I replied.

“Then do I look like that when I’m walking along the Boulevard des Capucines? Blood and thunder! So you’re making fun of me at last?”

“I assure you, M. Vincent—”

“But those spots were obtained by the same method as that used to imitate marble: a bit here, a bit there, slapdash, any old way. It’s unheard of, appalling! I’ll get a stroke from it, for sure.”

I attempted to calm him by showing him the
St.-Denis Canal
by M. Lepine and the
Butte Montmartre
by M. Ottin, both quite delicate in tone; but fate was strongest of all: the
Cabbages
of M. Pissarro stopped him as he was passing by and from red he became scarlet.

“Those are cabbages,” I told him in a gently persuasive voice. “Oh, the poor wretches, aren’t they caricatured! I swear not to eat

any more as long as I live!”

“Yet it’s not their fault if the painter—” “Be quiet, or I’ll do something terrible.”

Suddenly he gave a loud cry upon catching sight of the
Maison du Pendu
by M. Paul Cézanne. The stupendous impasto of this little jewel accomplished the work begun by the
Boulevard des Capucines
—Pere Vincent became delirious.

At first his madness was fairly mild. Taking the point of view of the impressionists, he let himself go along their lines:

“Boudin has some talent,” he remarked to me before a beach scene by that artist; “but why does he fiddle so with his marines?”

“Oh, you consider his painting too finished?”

“Unquestionably. Now take
Mlle.
Morisot! That young lady is not interested in reproducing trifling details. When she has a hand to paint, she makes exactly as many brushstrokes lengthwise as there are fingers, and the business is done. Stupid people who are finicky about the drawing of a hand don’t understand a thing about impressionism, and great Manet would chase them out of his republic.”

“Then M. Renoir is following the proper path; there is nothing superfluous in his
Harvesters
. I might almost say that his figures . .

.”

“. . . are even too finished.”

“Oh, M. Vincent! But do look at those three strips of color, which are supposed to represent a man in the midst of the wheat!”

“There are two too many; one would be enough.”

I glanced at Bertin’s pupil; his countenance was turning a deep red. A catastrophe seemed to me imminent, and it was reserved for M. Monet to contribute the last straw.

“Ah, there he is, there he is!” he cried, in front of number ninety-eight. “I recognize him, Papa Vincent’s favorite! What does that canvas depict? Look at the catalogue.”

“Impression:
Sunrise.
”

“
Impression
—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it . . . and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”

In vain I sought to revive his expiring reason . . . but the horrible fascinated him. “
The Laundress,
so badly laundered, of M. Degas drove him to cries of admiration. Sisley himself appeared to him affected

and precious. To indulge his insanity and out of fear of irritating him, I looked for what was tolerable among the impressionist pictures, and I acknowledged without too much difficulty that the bread, grapes, and chair of
Breakfast,
by M. Monet, were good bits of painting. But he rejected these concessions.

“No, no!” he cried. “Monet is weakening there. He is sacrificing to the false gods of Meissonier. Too finished, too finished! Talk to me of the
Modern Olympia
! That’s something well done.

“Alas, go and look at it! A woman folded in two, from whom a Negro girl is removing the last veil in order to offer her in all her ugliness to the charmed gaze of a brown puppet. Do you remember the
Olympia
of M. Manet? Well, that was a masterpiece of drawing, accuracy, finish, compared with the one by M. Cézanne.”

Finally the pitcher ran over. The classic skull of Pere Vincent, assailed from too many sides, went completely to pieces. He paused before the municipal guard who watches over all these treasures and, taking him to a portrait, began, for my benefit, a very emphatic criticism:

“Is he ugly enough?” He shrugged his shoulders. “From the front, he has two eyes . . . and a nose . . . and a mouth! Impressionists wouldn’t have thus sacrificed to detail. With what the painter has expended in the way of useless things, Monet would have done twenty municipal guards!

“‘ Keep moving, will you!’ said the portrait.

“You hear him—he even talks! The poor fool who daubed at him must have spent a lot of time at it!”

And in order to give the appropriate seriousness to his theory of esthetics, Pere Vincent began to dance the scalp dance in front of the bewildered guard, crying in a strangled voice: “Hi-ho! I am impression on the march, the avenging palette knife, the
Boulevard des Capucines
of Monet, the
Maison du Pendu
and the
Modern Olympia
of Cézanne. Hi-ho! Hi-ho!”

PARIS-JOURNAL—by ERNEST CHESNEAU— May 7, 1874

Le plein air, Exposition du Boulevard des Capucines

A young group of painters has opened an exhibition on the Boulevard des Capucines. If they had had the complete courage of their convictions or strong enough backs to run and bear the risks they might have managed to strike a considerable blow.

Their attempt, very deserving of sympathy, is in danger of being stillborn because it is not sufficiently emphatic. To have invited the participation of certain painters who are shuffling around the edges of the official Salon’s latest batch of inanities, and even artists of unquestionable talent, but who are active in areas quite different from their own, such as MM. de Nittis, Boudin, Bracquemond, Brandon, Lepine, and Gustave Colin, was a major mistake in both logistics and tactics.

One must always reckon with the inertia of public judgment. The public has no initiative. Initiative has to be taken on its behalf. If it has to choose between two works presented to it simultaneously, one in conformity with accepted conventions, the other baffling all tradition, it is a foregone conclusion that the public will declare itself in favor of the conventional work at the expense of the work of innovation.

That is what is happening at the Boulevard des Capucines. The only really interesting part of the exhibition, the only part worthy of study, is also the only part whose curious implication eludes the great majority of visitors.

This rapprochement was premature, at the very least. It may work in a few years’ time. So it is possible that it may offer a lesson and, in certain conditions, may provide the opportunity for a triumph for the “plein air school.”

For this is what I would like to call this school—which has somewhat oddly been christened the group of the Intransigents—as that pursuit of reality in the plein air is its clearest objective.

The plein air school is represented at the second floor studio in the Boulevard des Capucines by MM. Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Rouart, Renoir, and
Mlle.
Morisot.

Their leader, M. Manet, is absent. Did he fear the eccentricities of certain paintings? Did he disapprove of the compromise which allowed into so restricted an exhibition pictures conceived and painted in a spirit quite different from that of the school? I do not know. Was he right or wrong to hold back? I offer no answer. But there is no doubt at all that a selection of his paintings would have provided this exhibition with a more decisive, or at the very least more complete, statement of intent.

It is also possible that M. Manet, who has a fighting spirit, prefers to fight on common ground, that of the official Salon. Let us respect each man’s ideal freedom to prefer one course of action to another.

It may be helpful to inform the visitor that none of the pictures exhibited here has been submitted to the scrutiny of the official jury. As the exhibition opened on 15 April, it is by no means an exhibition of Refuses. But those who have seen it do not need to be told that not one would have been accepted, had they indeed been subjected to that trial. Why? In my eyes, that is their merit, for they break openly with all the traditional conventions.

But let the Limited Company—since that is what it is, indeed it might even be described as a cooperative—take stock. Its current organization opens the door to all the inept painters, all the laggards of the official exhibitions upon application for a share. This is the kiss of death.

If the company does not alter its status, does not affirm a common principle, it will not survive as an artistic company. That it might survive as a commercial one does not interest me at all.

“Impressionist.” Maman scoffs. “Is that how you want to be known?”

“Frankly, I can think of worse things to be called than an Impressionist.”

“Is old maid among them?”

I sit perfectly still and weigh my words because I do not want to fight with my mother. I do not have the energy. The move, the exhibit. Nearly half the year is gone and so is my will to forge headlong into battle.

“What people think is very important to you, isn’t it?”

She frowns at me as if I have just uttered a riddle or posed a trick question and is in no mood for games. But what I say is perfectly clear and true.

The showing of the Societe Anonyme des Artistes was a disappointment in many ways—not a single sale, mediocre attendance, mixed reviews tilting toward bad.

Maman is simply mortified and she’s been spoiling for a fight since the first snide words appeared in print.

I can’t even fight with her because I don’t even know what I want anymore.

At least Maman has conviction.

What kind of existence is this—waiting to live, waiting to be happy, believing better days will befall tomorrow, when tomorrow never comes.

“I took the liberty of contacting your former teacher Monsieur Guichard and asked him to view the show and render his opinion of the horrors in which you were involving yourself.”

She pulls a letter from her pocket and holds it up.

“I almost chose not to share it with you, but then thought better of it. My dear child, you are thirty-three years old. Well beyond marriageable age.” Her voice cracks with the emotion I see swimming in her eyes. “My Bijou, I am not well—”

“Maman stop this nonsense, you are as fit as I am.”

She waves the letter to silence me. I fall back against the cushions on the divan.

“I worry about you,” she says. “I worry what will happen to you when I am no longer here. Who will care for you, what fate will befall?”

I bite the insides of my cheeks because I want to remind her that it is I who take care of her. That I am perfectly capable of existing on my own. As she is so fond of reminding me, I am thirty-three years old and have had quite a while to grow comfortable with my own company.

“It is with these reasons in mind that I have decided to share Monsieur Guichard’s words. I hope you will take them to heart.

I sigh. I am so tired of this back and forth, push and pull. She’s accepting when the reviews are favorable or the sales large, but the moment the sky clouds, she runs to escape the rain.

I realize as I sit there, that my own mother is more of a fair-weather source of support than even the critic Louis Leroy.

She unfolds the letter, and I brace myself for what I am sure is to be the evidence of my mortal failure.

Madame, the kind welcome you gave me this morning touched me deeply. I felt younger by fifteen years, for this I was suddenly transported back to a time when I guided your girls in the arts, as teacher and as friend.

I have seen the room at Nadar, and wish to tell you my frank opinion at once. When I entered, dear Madame, and saw your daughter’s works in this pernicious milieu, my heart sank. I said to myself, “One does not associate with madmen except at some peril.” Manet was right in trying to dissuade her from exhibiting.