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What You Don’t Know

About Authentic
Impressionism

Above is a detail of a recent of a painting (“On A Dreamy Afternoon”)

of mine. I work within the tradition of French Impressionism.[i] Yet I am
reluctant to call myself an Impressionist for the simple reason that in
the year 2020 a painter doing Impressionism will be thought of by
elites in the world of visual art as someone whose work is derivative
and chocolate boxy. Worse, perhaps, I would be thought of as
someone who is clueless as to the advances – pointed to, of course,
by these same elites in visual art – during the hundred and forty-six
years since the Impressionist held their first exhibition in 1874. The
cognoscenti, however, are polite. They would simply dismiss me and
my work out of hand as unfashionable.

Fair enough. I can accept that. Besides, unfashionable in some circles

is often quite fashionable in others. But I am also convinced that the
challenge of sincerity posed to the art world by a handful of Parisian
painters in 1874 is as relevant now as it was then. Therefore, I have
chosen a different appellation. I am an authentic Impressionist.

Let’s begin with a brief summary of the story of the painters who
became known as the French Impressionists and in whose tradition I
work.

Who, What, Where, When, and Why

Morisot detail

Where: Paris, the center of western culture during the 19th century
and into the 20th century.

Who: The names you will find most often associated with French
Impressionism are Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cezanne,
Frèdèric Bazille, Edgar Degas, Èdouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe
Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, all of whom came of
age in the late-19thcentury.

However, in explaining the philosophy and practice of the movement

known as  French Impressionism or what I have been calling authentic
Impressionism, I shall focus on Pissarro, Cèzanne, Monet, and
Degas[ii], given that they left behind the most developed thoughts on
what was considered a new approach to painting. In terms of the work
itself that I will show you, these same painters plus Morisot are,
perhaps, the most emblematic of the kind of work that issued from
this new approach.

When: The period during which the French Impressionist dominated

Paris, strictly and narrowly, can be bracketed by the first and last of
their eight independent exhibitions. The first of these independent
exhibitions took place in April-May 1874, while the last was held in
May-June 1886. Some of the Impressionists lived well into the 20th
century and their influence impacted painting around the world. So it
is not uncommon to find celebrated Russian Impressionists or
American Impressionists working in the early part of the 20th century,
for example. But before we can understand French Impressionists and
what makes their work distinctive, we need to know what
independence meant to them and why it was so important. It is this
part of the story that is the least understood and the most revealing.

What and Why: A Special Kind Of Freedom

The French Revolution, which took place in 1789, led to the abolition
of absolute monarchy. But the stranglehold by the aristocracy over art
education and the all-important career-making exhibitions of the
Salon de Paris persisted late into the 19th century. The painters that
would become known as the Impressionists were artists in a long line
of painters who since the French Revolution pressed repeatedly for
control over the making and exhibition of their work. With the
aristocracy greatly weakened through war and political uprisings,
particularly in Paris, the Impressionists, known initially as the
Intransigents, launched a series of exhibitions independent of the
Salon. It was by means of these independent exhibitions that our
merry band of reluctant rebels achieved the long sought-after goal:
they had absolute control over their art making, democratic control
over the organization of their exhibitions, and established, for the first
time, “a direct relation with the public.” The Salon de Paris, steadily
displaced by private galleries, agents, and exhibitions, by 1890, never
was to recover its prestige or authority.

Pissarro detail

We shall delve further into the “what” as we actually examine the work
of these painters, but in order to do that we need to look more closely
at “why.” It’s a story all artists ought to know.

“There’s no sincerity.”

In 1862, a 22-year old Monet was studying in the atelier of Charles

Gleyre, along with Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille. Gleyre had garnered
notable success at the Salon early in his career. Having the
opportunity to study with him, then, presented an opportunity in the
conventional sense: the opportunity for an artist to make painting a
career. There were no other similar opportunities.

But then an astonishing thing happened. Monet suddenly urged his

fellow artists to revolt. But why? What had gone wrong? The event
that triggered Monet’s abrupt dissatisfaction was a critique that
Gleyre had given him. Gleyre had told the young Monet that he had
made a stocky model look stocky. “But he is stocky,” said Monet.
“True, but that is ugly,” warned the master; “Moreover, you have made
his foot too large.” Again Monet, “But his foot is large.” Gleyre
cautioned Monet that if he wished to be juried favorably into Salon
exhibitions, he “must think of the works of antiquity.” Keep in mind
that a young student’s future patronage, in that moment, turned on
his (and it was mostly his) ability to glorify powerful political and
religious figures, their military campaigns, stories in the literature they
favored, as well as their feet and bodies – large and stocky
notwithstanding. Monet’s response: “Let’s get out of here. The place
is unhealthy. There is no sincerity.”

Here we come to the very heart of the philosophy of authentic

Impressionism. Consider the concept of “unhealthy” in this context.
Monet was articulating the notion that while he and his compatriots
dreamed of a painting career, it would only make sense if in that
career they could be free to become more of who they already were.
If career meant that they would become the picture-making
instruments of someone else, they would never discover their own
individual and distinct abilities, or what moved each of them
differently, or know the means of expression they would each invent
and employ for themselves. They would never know in their lifetime
who they were most. At 22, Monet knew he would never have the
opportunity to become Monet. That’s what was unhealthy. That is
why Monet believed that there was no sincerity in the studios
teaching painters to become Salon art stars.

Cezanne detail

Naturally, this point of view was understood by art system elites then
as subversive. It meant that while the selling of paintings might be a
business, particularly in light of the growing “bourgeois” economy, as
it was called, the making of paintings was not and never could be. The
reward was in the work, Cèzanne would implore, never in adjusting
one’s natural aesthetic proclivities in order to capture a career
advancing “opportunity.”  Competitions were derided for the same
reason. Respecting the dictates of juries entirely divorced from each
artist’s personal unfolding, as it were, only diminished the control over
their work that they sought. Not that members of the group did not
pursue a variety of exhibition venues. They did, compelled to often,
but they were shrewd about it and clear. Monet, for example, referring
to a painting he was submitting to the Salon in 1880 acknowledged,
“This is not Monet.” Pissarro felt that were he to exhibit at the Salon
he would have to “make too many concessions, thus sacrificing the
honor of his cause.”[iii] But the direction and the value they
consistently prioritized and the one that explained their approach to
painting was that of self-direction.

What Distinguishes Authentic Impressionism In The Work Itself

Before I show you examples (primarily details of larger paintings) of

their work and mine, there is a last link in the chain that completes the
circle and that is you. The Impressionists sought and obtained a
“direct relationship with the public” because they wanted to pass onto
the viewer the experience they had while making the work. Degas
noted, for example, that “Drawing is not what one sees but what one
can make others see.” And Cézanne: our methods are only “simple
means for us to make the public feel what we feel.” Keep in mind that
this transfer of feeling, were we to paint to please juries or agents,
would eventually be eroded. This is precisely what Degas had in mind
when he recalled the shared sensibility of the serious artists of his
generation: “In my day, people didn’t ‘succeed.’”

Below I have listed a few distinguishing features of authentic

Impressionism but not all. For example, the role that a sense of
atmosphere plays – particularly in the work of Monet and Cézanne,
would require a considerably longer essay to explain.

1. Do not make pictures of things; make visual experiences

“No tasks, no tasks.” This was an admonition articulated by several in

the group including Manet who early on was considered the group’s
thought leader. This meant that painting should serve no external
purpose, should not refer to the subject matter for its meaning or
beauty. Making paintings with social commentary or paintings that
depended on iconic figures for its ability to project feelings was
viewed by Pissarro, as Joachim Pissarro (great grandson of the
painter) reports, as nothing short of “aesthetic slavery.”

This is a huge shift in the understanding of what the activity of

painting could be all about and, I might add, this shift is still not
grasped, I would argue, by scholars writing today who mistakenly
assume that painters, then and now, are akin to human cameras and
picture-making journalists or sociologists. As odd as it may sound, we
do not make pictures of things, even though a picture may result. We
are visual artists and because of this we are not indifferent to visual
stimuli such as line and color. In fact, because we are moved,
essentially, by the visual elements that we see, it is best, then, that we
not see the thing as a thing with a name but rather the visual elements
of which the thing is composed.

2. You must be moved by and feel “sensations.”

“ You are not a painter if you don’t love painting more than
anything else; but it is not enough to know your métier, you must
also be moved.        – Manet

Moved by visual elements, to be more specific. In other words, I may

feel nostalgia when looking at my childhood home or loneliness in
walking alone on a beach. But this isn’t what Manet is getting at. The
visual elements that we respond to are sensations of color and line
which, as stimuli, possess us. This oneness with nature is part of the
sensation of feeling larger and, as our brush touches the canvas, we
are propelled into a new realm of perception. So necessary is this
metamorphosis to the activity of painting that it requires, as Monet
instructed, that we do not see the thing before us. Just see little
pieces of color. This means I must get past seeing things with names,
like tree, house, person. Paint the head as you would a doorknob,
advised Cézanne.

I live on Lake Como. And because my intention is not to make pictures

of the lake, my challenge is to avoid the beauty of the lake that is
horribly obvious to everyone! How can I get past that? How can I
escape into a realm, where the lake as a lake not only disappears but
the lake just as line and color begins to possess me?

Learning to see just the sensations of light provides the answer. And
so I enter into a ritual: I must escape from the normal realm of
perception by breaking my vision into visual pieces. These pieces of
color stir feelings within me. My effort to mix these colors through an
orchestration of varied brushstrokes completes who I am in that
moment.

In the painting above which I did on Lake Como, yes, there is the lake
and buildings, but look again (click image below for a larger version)
through the eyes of someone trained to see past the facts of the lake
and buildings; it becomes possible to actually see the vibrating
sensual pieces of nature that we call line in some instances and color
in others.

Color first. Lake and buildings second. I pulled out little pieces of color
that I actually did see and placed them in a way that they vibrate off
the canvas, carry, and mix optically at a distance. The intention here is
to make a painting where the brush strokes of paint feel like the
sensations of light that moved me. “Impressionism,” said Monet, “is
only direct sensation.”

Below we find Monet making marks that enable viewers of his work to
feel the light that moved him.

Degas (below) responding to the sensations of nature (models) in the

studio.

Morisot (below), not seeing people or a bench but the sensations of

light reflecting from human figures, uses emotive brushwork to give
you the experience she had.

3. We Avoid Literal Precision

An example of a picture that is literally precise is a photograph. As

noted above, we do not want our paintings to refer to or depend upon
the subject matter for its emotional impact, we rely on a variety of
visual elements to both express and evoke feelings. The brush stroke
may be the most important of these elements for brush strokes are
the language of feelings that the painter realizes.

Sometimes we caress the canvas; at other times we attack the

canvas. Brush strokes are extensions of the liveliness of nature, a
nature as source. Varied and raw, they transfer to the viewer the
feeling of pure presence that the painter had. Authentic Impressionist
paintings, therefore, aren’t about finish. We are not baking cakes or
making something the value of which is determined by some external
standard called “finished.” The value of a painting are the feelings we
had as we made it. Paintings are alive at any point in time. Just as we
would not say that a 10-year old is unfinished and therefore unworthy
of our attention, we would not say that the Morisot painting above is
incomplete and would hold more value were we to make it more literal.

Below is a detail from one of Monet’s water lilies. The painting is not
about water lilies. They are the prompt. It’s about the feelings that
Monet newly realizes as he stands before nature in what he called a
posture of “total self-surrender.” Authentic Impressionists straddle
two realms of sensations: the realm of the prompt or the subject
matter and the realm of emotion that he or she wishes to render and
make visible for the world to see and feel as well.

In my painting below, the prompt was lake, boats, and buildings. My

purpose in surrendering to the sensations of my vision was to get
captured and propelled into a realm where I am moved and able to
move someone else.

A viewer may initially conclude that authentic Impressionist’s work is

not precise. But, as with the concept “finish”, the concept “precise” is
a category mistake. Are relationships among people precise? We
ought to treat paintings as living things. If when you see a Monet
painting and are moved and we know that his intention was to “render
his feelings,” we could say that he was precise in that rendering, but
making a picture of a boat look precisely like a boat didn’t interest him
nor does it interest me. Personally, I find literal paintings to be rather
boring.

4. We Paint In Layers

You may have noticed that these paintings are painted in layers. For
example, let me take a detail of the painting above to illustrate what I
mean.

On the left (above) is the detail and it enables us to look more closely
at a section of the painting in question. On the right is a diagram
showing how the painting was painted in layers. The top layer is the
final layer or painting. The layer under the top layer is the
underpainting and the bottom layer is the canvas. Now, understand
that the use of three layers would be the simplest version; Monet
used dozens of layers, but the virtue of this construction is that it
allows the viewer to look down into the painting and past the surface
layer, sometimes all the way down to what is called the ground or
actual canvas. This gives the viewer a sense of space, almost 3D like.
Lines and color tangle, adding a sense of movement or freshness
along with depth.