by the older generation of Barbizon painters. Monet was to paint alongside several of these masters – Boudin, Jongkind, Courbet (and Whistler, too) – and by watching them at work would receive much practical instruction.
Although Monet did not regard his immediate teacher Charles Gleyre, whose studio he joined in 1862, with great favour, his stay there was by no means wasted, for he acquired valuable professional skills during this time. Charles Gleyre was the only teacher who, in Monet’s eyes, truly personified neoclassical painting. Gleyre had just turned sixty when he met the future Impressionists. Born in Switzerland on the banks of Lake Geneva, he had lived in France since childhood. After graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts, Gleyre spent six years in Italy. Success in the Paris Salon made him famous and he taught in the studio established by the celebrated Salon painter, Hippolyte Delaroche.
The Thames and the Houses of Parliament, 1871.
Oil on canvas, 47 × 73 cm.
The National Gallery, London.
Taking themes from the Bible and antique mythology, Gleyre painted large-scale canvases composed with the clarity and clean lines commonly associated with classical art. The formal qualities of his female nudes can only be compared to the work of the great Dominique Ingres. In Gleyre’s independent studio, pupils received traditional training in neoclassical painting, but were free from the official requirements of the École des Beaux-Arts.
Moreover Gleyre, although an advocate of the academic system of teaching, nonetheless allowed his pupils a certain amount of freedom and did not attempt to dampen any enthusiasm they might have for landscape painting. Most important to Monet in Gleyre’s studio, however, were his incipient friendships with Frédéric Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. We know that he had already become acquainted with Pissarro, and thus it can be said that from the earliest stage of his career fate brought Monet together with those who were to be his colleagues and allies for many years to come.
Lilacs in Dull Weather, 1872–1873.
Oil on canvas, 50 × 65.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Lilacs in the Sun, 1873.
Oil on canvas, 50 × 65 cm,
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He wrote Boudin from Paris that a little group of young landscape artists had formed at the studio, and that they would be happy to meet with him. He also told his friends of another painter he had found in Normandy. This was the remarkable Dutchman Jongkind. His landscapes were saturated with colour, and their sincerity, at times even their naiveté, was combined with subtle observation of the Normandy shore’s variable nature. Monet remembered that Jongkind explained to him all the “whys and wherefores” of his style, rounding out the education he had received from Boudin. “From that moment on he was my true master,” said Monet. “I owe the final education of my eye to him” (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 14). The Normandy landscape painters Boudin and Johan Jongkind rank among the Impressionists’ direct influences.
From the moment they met at Gleyre’s studio the young painters moved forward together, casting the weight of the classical tradition off their shoulders. These future Impressionists shared the same objectives and ideas, and together they developed their method of painting. Their contemporaries perceived their painting as a single whole. In 1873, before the first Impressionists’ exhibition, the critic Arman Sylvestre wrote about the exhibition at the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery: “At first glance one has trouble distinguishing the paintings of M. Monet from M. Sisley, and the latter’s style from that of M. Pissarro. After a bit of study one learns that M. Monet is the most skilful and the most daring, M. Sisley is the most harmonious and most timid, and M. Pissarro is the most authentic and the most naïve” (L. Venturi, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 284).
They had stopped attending Gleyre’s studio, and together they now left to work in the region favoured by the Barbizon School painters, the Fontainebleau forest. Lodgings were only to be had in the small village of Chailly-en-Bière, at the far end of the forest. It had only two hotels: the Cheval Blanc and the Lion d’Or. All four moved into the Cheval Blanc, run by old Paillard. It was a cozy hotel, decorated with the canvases left behind by other painters who had stayed there in years before. The friends set to work with enthusiasm. “The forest is really superb in certain parts,” Bazille wrote his parents. “We’ve got nothing like these oak trees in Montpellier. The rocks are not as beautiful, despite their fine reputation” (F. Daulte, op. cit., p. 35). Monet painted broad forest paths, lined with trees and bathed in sunlight. In these landscapes one senses the solid instruction Gleyre had managed to give them, though it may have been against their will. Monet’s landscapes of this period inevitably bring the clarity, logic, and order of Nicolas Poussin’s paintings to mind. Constructed using the golden ratio, they are harmonious, balanced, and impeccably composed. As in Poussin, there are amply rounded mountain peaks, dense with lush, green trees. Nevertheless it was at that same time, in the Fontainebleau forest, that Monet first had a revelation of the richness of the colour effects created by the sun filtering through the leaves.
Formative Years
During the early and mid-1860s these young painters were still searching for an identity and were still rather uncertain as to where their rejection of academic clichés and Salon painting would lead them; but they were fully prepared to follow boldly in the steps of those who, before their own involvement in art, had begun the struggle for new ideals outside of the artistic establishment. At the outset they were particularly attracted by, in Monet’s words, the “naïve giant” Courbet, but by the late 1860s they were beginning to show a preference for Manet, whose pupil, Berthe Morisot, joined their circle. The complete antithesis of the noisy provincial Courbet, Manet was an elegant member of Parisian society, and one of the central figures in the French art world during these years. He struggled constantly in search of an art which was true to life and attracted an ever-increasing number of followers from the ranks of young painters seeking novel means of expression, while often provoking open hostility on the part of official critical circles and the Salon jury. The main stages of this struggle are well-known: The Luncheon on the Grass at the exhibition of the Salon des Refusés in 1863, Olympia in the 1865 Salon, and his one-man show at the time of the World Fair in 1867. By the end of the 1860s Manet was the recognised leader of the Batignolle group of artists and critics, who met in the Café Guerbois and included Edgar Degas, Henri Fantin-Latour, Armand Guillaumin, Louis Endmond Duranty, Zola and Pissarro, as well as the friends from Gleyre’s studio. Manet and Monet knew one another’s work long before they were introduced, and although at first very guarded in his attitude to Monet’s artistic experimentation, the Batignolle group’s leader soon became interested in him and began to follow the development of his work very attentively. As far as Monet was concerned, he did not so much imitate Manet as imbibe the older artist’s spirit of delving into the essence of one’s subject, gaining the impetus to release the powers latent within him. Monet’s development was also influenced by his active contacts with Bazille, Renoir, Sisley and Pissarro. Discussions, arguments and, most importantly, working together served to sharpen the individual skills of each and facilitated the development of certain general principles.
Poppies, 1873.
Oil on canvas, 50 × 65 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Printemps (Springtime), 1872.
Oil
