Impressionism

"M. Camille Pissarro has painted a field bathed in sunlight, whose forms, colors and reflections are admirably synthesized. It is more field than any field we have ever seen. We cannot understand what interest the brutal paintings of M. Claude Monet and the simplicist works of M. Renoir can have. Both these artists have taken the wrong path."

"Tell Tanguy to send me some paints. What I need most are ten tubes of white, two of chrome yellow, one bright red, one brown lac, one ultramarine, five Veronese green, one cobalt j I have on hand only one tube of white ... I expect to begin to paint again from nature, and I need the colors."

"..the Impressionists are only.. ..makers of spots [of paint], and, what is more, spots stolen from the Japanese."

"The purity of the spectral element being the keystone of my.. ..searching for an optical formula on this basis ever, since I held a brush.. ..having read Charles Blanc in school and therefore knowing Chevreul's laws and Eugene Delacroix's precepts, having read the studies by the same Charles Blanc on the same painter [= Delacroix] (if I remember correctly)."

"I am distressed, almost discouraged, and fatigued to the point of slightly ill.. .Never have I been so unlucky with the weather. Never three suitable days in succession, so I have to be always making changes [in his paintings] for everything is growing and turning green. And I have dreamed of painting the Creuse [river in the South of France] just as we saw it.. .In short, by dint of changes I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, and then there is that river that shrinks, swells again, green one day, then yellow, sometimes almost dry, and which tomorrow will be a torrent, after the terrible rain that is falling at the moment. In fact, I am very worried. Write to me; I have a great need of comfort."

"What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story."

"People will keep on taking them [The French Impressionists] for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters."

"I wanted to tell you that in about 1883 there occurred a kind of break in my work. I had got to the end of 'Impressionism', and I had come to the conclusion that I didn't either how to paint or how to draw. In short, I had come to a dead end."

"We have reached that delightful moment when 'Impressionism' is about to be born, when its light (the formula for which has yet to be found) is still only a hint, a caress, in the silvery snows of Manet [Monet? because Manet did not paint in open air] or in the pale skies of Pissarro. Ah, how one would like to prolong this moment of hesitation for ever, this moment of transition, when transparent blue shadows are putting black shadows to flight and bitumen disappears!"

"Le Père Tanguy is himself a martyr to the cause of néo-impressionnisme. ...he is constantly shifting his quarters from inability to pay his rent. No one knows what or where he eats; he sleeps in a closet among his oils and varnishes, and gives up all the room he can to his beloved pictures. There they were, piled up in stacks: violent or thrilling Van Goghes; dusky, heavy Cézannes that looked as if they were painted in mud, yet had curious felicities of interpretation of character; exquisite fruit-painting by Dubois-Pillet... daring early Sisleys, that made the master of the shop shake his kindly head at the artist's later painting; and many others, all lovingly preserved, and lovingly brought out by the old man. Le Père Tanguy... had a curious way of first looking down at his picture with all the fond love of a mother, and then looking up at you over his glasses, as if begging you to admire his beloved children. His French and his manners were perfect and when he... made his bow it was with all the grace and dignity of the old school. He has gone on for years finding the impressionists in colors, etc., and the artists I was with told me, after we left the shop, that many a time had he been sorely in need of money and had gone to remind some artist of an outstanding bill, but found some excuse for his call and come away again without mentioning it, because it seemed to him as if the artist were in straits. I could not help feeling... that a movement in art which can inspire such devotion must have a deeper final import than the mere ravings of a coterie."

"Everybody's going crazy over the Impressionists; what art needs is a Poussin made over according to nature. There you have it in a nutshell."

"Work on the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis.. .Don’t be afraid of putting on colour.. .Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression."

"Painting certainly means more to me than everything else in the world. I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven't at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle."

"Look for the kind of nature that suits your temperament. The motif should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing. There is no need to tighten the form which can be obtained without that. Precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations. Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing. In a mass, the greatest difficulty is not to give the contour in detail, but to paint what is within. Paint the essential character of things, try to convey it by any means whatsoever, without bothering about technique.—When painting, make a choice of subject, see what is lying at the right and what at the left, and work on everything simultaneously. Don't work bit by bit but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brushstrokes of the right color and value, while noticing what is alongside. Use small brushstrokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately. The eye should not be fixed on one point, but should take in everything, while observing the reflections which the colors produce on their surroundings. Work at the same time upon the sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you can see nothing more to add. Observe the aerial perspective as well, from the foreground to the horizon, the reflection of the sky, of foilage. Don't be afraid of putting on color, refine the work little by little.—Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression you feel. Don't be timid in front of nature: one must be bold, at the risk of being deceived and making mistakes. One must have only one master—nature; she is the one always to be consulted."

"Neo-Impressionist method is an attempt is made to achieve the richness of the sunlight spectrum with all its tones. An orange that blends with yellow and red, a violet that tends toward red and blue, a green between blue and yellow are, with white the sole elements. Through mixture (in the eye of the observer) of these pure colours, whose relationship can be varied at will, from the most brilliant to the greyish. Every brush stroke that is taken from the palette remains pure on the canvas."

"The Neo-Impressionist does not stipple, he divides. And dividing involves.. ..guaranteeing all benefits of light."

"Pissarro wants to achieve delicacy by means of adjustments of nearly like tones; he keeps from juxtaposing two distant tones and does without the vibrant note which such contrast gives, but strives on the contrary to diminish the distance between two tints by introducing into each one of them intermediate elements which he calls 'passage'. But the neo-impressionist technique is based precisely on this type of contrast, for which he feels no need, and on the violent purity of tints which hurts his eye. He has kept of divisionism only the technique, the little dot, whose raison d'etre is exactly that it enables the transcription of this contrast and the conservation of this purity. So it is easy to understand why he [Pissarro] gave up this means, insufficient as it is by itself."

"Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in.. ..Ruskin's Elements."

"It was not until 1869 that I met him [Édouard Manet] again, but this time, we became friends immediately. From the first meeting, he invited me to join him every evening in a café of the 'Batignolles' where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day spent at their studios. I would meet there, Fantin-Latour and Cézanne, Degas - who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy, the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola who was just starting-off in the literary world and a number of others. I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. There was nothing more interesting than these discussions with their perpetual differences of opinion. Our mind and souls were stimulated.. ..One would always leave, all the better immersed, the will stronger, our thinking more defined and clear."

"What exactly was the special and final addition made to the instrument of painting in the nineteenth century? ...[P]ainting accepted at last the full contents of vision as material, all that is given in the coloured camera-reflection of the real world. ...In the first part of the nineteenth century the studies of English landscape painters in natural lighting were accompanied by the researches of science into the laws of light. First Turner and then Delacroix... who had developed their art on traditional lines, received the full impact of the new impulse... Turner was a reader of Field's books on light and colours. He haunted [a] photographer's shops to discuss the laws of light; he was acquainted with Goethe's theory... Delacroix... discovered for himself the laws of simultaneous contrast of colours published by Chevreul in 1838. ...Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, received from Turner in 1870 the impulsion and the clue to the rendering of high and vivid landscape illumination. They applied the law more strictly and narrowly, and the word 'impressionist,' which had been gathering its various meanings in scientific and artistic discussions... was first applied to them. ...For purposes of analysis it sees the world as a mosaic of patches of colour... The old vision had beaten out three separate acts—the determination of the edges and limits of things, the shading and modelling of the spaces... with black and white, and the tinting of these spaces with their local colour. ...The old painting followed the old vision by... modelling the in dead colour, and finally colouring... The new analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or less fused, of the colour patches... to recover the innocence of the eye, to forget the thing as an object... to... recognize that 'local colour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone but also in '. And painting tended to follow this new vision by substituting one process for three... ceasing to think in lines except as the boundaries by which these patches limit one another."

"This Mr Dewhurst (Wynford Dewhurst, [who was writing a book Impressionist Painting, its Genesis and Development, published in 1904] has not understood the Impressionist movement in the very least. All he sees in it is a technical method... ...He also says that before going to London [to see the English landscape-painters as Constable and Turner], we [ Monet and Pissarro ] knew nothing whatsoever about light; but we have studies that prove the contrary. He omits the influence of w:Claude Lorrain, Corot, all the 18th-century painters, Chardin most of all. But what he fails to realize is that while Turner and Constable were of service to us, they confirmed our suspicion that those painters had not understood 'The Analysis of Shadows', which in the case of Turner are always a deliberate effect, a plain dark patch. As to the division of tones, Turner confirmed us its value as a method, but not as a means of accuracy or truth to nature. In any case, the 18th century was our tradition. It seems to me that Turner too, had looked at w:Claude Lorrain. I am even inclined to think there is a picture by Turner, 'Sunset', hung side by side with a Claude."

"How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert did — sly dog!"

"The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism, where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim."

"For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations."

"It's like Impressionism. They all do it at the Salons. Oh, very discreetly! I too was an Impressionist. I don't conceal the fact. Pissarro had an enormous influence on me. But I wanted to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums."

"That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro.. ..He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That’s a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist."

"The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater."

"Since the appearance of Impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red.. .But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections."

"My ambition is limited to capturing something transient."

"Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than Sargent thinks. But he went on to agree that impressionists had noted how strong"

"I didn't become one.. .As long as I can remember I've always been one."

"I want the to give colors intoxication, fullness, excitement, power. By trying to forget Impressionism, I wanted to conquer it. In the process I was conquered. We must work with assimilated, digested Impressionism."

"No, mes amis, impressionism is not charlatanry, nor a formula, nor a school. I should say rather it is the bold resolve to throw all those things overboard."

"Comme nous avons mal fait de nous laisser appeler Impressionistes."

"What a pity we allowed ourselves to be called Impressionists."

"The point is that any piece of Impressionism, whether it be prose, verse or painting, or sculpture, is the record of the impression."

"The impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative.."

"From the day that the impressionists liberated painting, the modern picture set out at once the structure itself on contrasts; instead of submitting to a subject, the painter makes an insertion and uses a subject in the service of purely plastic means.."

"In 1874 Cézanne participated in the exhibition of the Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers at the Photographic Galleries... There were thirty... which included Pissaro, Guillaumin, Renoir, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Degas, Bracquemond, de Nittis, Brandon, Boudin, Cals, G. Colin, Latouche, Lépine, Rouart... all more or less "innovators." This exhibition enjoyed the same sort of success as had the . But the public found occasion to protest from another point of view... you had to dig into your pocket to see the "Impressionists"!—for that was the name the public bestowed with one accord... after seeing a Monet in the exhibition entitled Impression. [I]n 1877, Cézanne exhibited... with several members of the same group, in a vacant flat at 6 Rue Lepeletier. On this occasion the exhibitors, at the suggestion of Renoir, unhesitatingly adopted the name of Impressionists. They did not pretend to be offering a new type of painting; they simply confined themselves to telling the public honestly, "Here is our work. We know you don't like it. If you come in, so much the worse for you; no money refunded." But... the public came to believe that the new word signified a new school, a misapprehension which persists even to this day."

"What I am trying to do is something different — an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is usually misapplied, especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art."

"One must not forget that Boudin had received lessons from a master, Jongkind, whose oeuvre, especially in the watercolors, is the origin along with Corot|Corot]] of what has been called Impressionism."

"The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors."

"If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning."

"Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision)."

"The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason."

"Hullo! What's this? What are these funny brown-and-olive landscapes doing in an impressionist exhibition? Brown! I ask you? Isn't it absurd for a man to go on using brown and call himself an impressionist painter?"

"It is true that the Impressionists perhaps gave a more faithful representation of nature through their discoveries in out-of-door painting. But that they increased their statute as artists by so doing is controversial.. .If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression."

"While Ingres and Delacroix had been more or less isolated exponents of their tendencies, out-distancing their followers, while the naturalist movement had been centered around one man, Courbet, impressionism had come into being through the simultaneous efforts of a number of artists, who in the continual give-and-take had elaborated a style of their own to express their vision. It was with their achievement in mind that Vincent wrote in 1888: "More and more it seems to me that the pictures which must be painted to make present-day painting completely itself... are beyond the power of one isolated individual. They will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining together to execute an idea held in common.""

"Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light."

"The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color."