how and why the first critics scolded him
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On April 15, 1874, an exhibition of the Anonymous Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, a community of artists rejected by the conservative Paris Salon, including Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas, opened in Paris. Their rejection of the laws and rules of academic painting in favor of an interest in recording impressions of the world caused a scandal and a flurry of criticism that did not stop for a long time. Opponents of the artists saw the apotheosis of this new style in Monet’s painting “Impression. Sunrise” and mockingly nicknamed the whole group “Impressionists”, from the French “impression” – impression. Artists adopted this nickname as a title. On the anniversary of the first exhibition of the Impressionists and their first scandal, we found out how and why the critics scolded them.
1
“Impression”! Wallpaper would look more complete than this seascape.
Le Charivari, 1874
2
These so-called artists grab a canvas, paints and brushes, smudge a few strokes and write their name at the bottom. They are like the inmates of a mental asylum who pick up stones on the street and think they are diamonds.
Le Figaro, 1876
3
It is worth paying attention to visitors entering the Impressionist halls, where all the colors of the spectrum – daring pink, poisonous green, rich blue, screaming red, unbearably violet – seem to be fighting with each other. The person entering begins to twitch involuntarily, because he, quite naturally, wants to close his eyes.
L’Independence Belge, 1874
4
After this exhibition, I re-evaluated the good old rules that dictate that beauty is beauty and ugliness is ugliness.
New York Tribune, 1876
5
A terrifying spectacle of human vanity reaching the point of insanity. Someone must make Mr. Pissarro understand that the trees are not purple, that the sky is not like churned butter, that in no other country in the world will we see what he paints. Someone needs to convince Mr. Degas that there are rules in art. Someone should convey to Mr. Renoir that the female torso is not a shapeless pile of meat with purple-green spots that appear on decaying flesh.
Le Figaro, 1876
6
The works of Claude Monet are the most ridiculous thing in the exhibition. Especially his “Turkeys”. Imagine a huge green spot dotted with smaller white ones, from which necks stick out.
L’Evenement, 1877
7
Are these furrows? Is this frost? These are some kind of scrapings from a palette, smeared on a dirty canvas.
Le Charivari, 1874
7
They do not intend to reproduce the shape of the human body or facial features: they simply need to convey the “impression”, ignoring color, light or shadow. To realize this ridiculous theory of theirs, they create crazy, wild nonsense, which, fortunately, has no precedents in art, because it is nothing more than an outright denial of the most basic rules of painting. In the child’s drawings there is sincerity and naivety that evoke a smile, but the unbridledness of this school gives rise to indignation and disgust.
La Presse, 1874
9
Anyone who looks at this “Sunset on the Seine” sees just a piece of tomato stuck to the sky.
Le Soleil, 1882
9
Sisley’s style is called “gun painting” and it is said that he filled the barrel with tubes of paint and simply discharged it onto the canvas. This is, of course, a joke, but a very subtle one: if the impressionists do not use this creative method, then they very well could.
Le Figaro, 1882
eleven
Monet’s sea is a rather dense thing. If Christ had walked on such water, then materialists would have nothing to object to – there is no miracle here.
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1882
12
The sun, for example, sometimes casts blue shadows – it’s true. But for all the landscapes, all the water, all the interiors of houses and cafes, all balconies and still lifes to always be shrouded in the same blue haze – this is too much.
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1880
13
Cezanne is a great artist, one of those who captures and reflects reality. True, this reality of his is always terribly ugly (well, imagine waking up at night, and next to you is one of the women from his paintings). Of course, in life there is a place not only for the beautiful, but also for the ugly. So, Cezanne is ugly. He could have drawn stink from his mouth.
Art critic James Hanecker in a letter to a friend, 1907
14
Monet has a painting of a woman in a grove. The model had apparently been dead for some time, as her silhouette began to disintegrate. A heartbreaking sight!
L’Actualite, 1882
14
For one of them, everything in nature is blue. For another, everything is purple: earth, sky, water, human skin, everything in his paintings takes on a purple hue. Most doctors will confirm: it happens that due to pathological processes in the nervous system, the perception of colors is distorted. This is exactly how the impressionists see, since green has almost completely disappeared from their palettes, and blue, which in such disorders is the last to disappear from the range of recognizable colors, on the contrary, absorbs everything in their paintings.
L’Art Moderne, 1881
16
Seurat’s terrifying painting “The Bathers” was born in a coarse, vulgar and banal brain – the work of a man who wanted to distinguish himself by his vulgar limitations and the size of the picture.
The Sun, 1885
17
It is impossible to stand for more than ten minutes in front of some Impressionist paintings without thinking about seasickness. If you don’t want to, you will remember the lunch you ate on a beautiful spring day of cream cheese and raspberries, which could not withstand the vagaries of the waves and splashed out.
Notes Parisiennes, 1877
18
Their motto seems to be: “Beauty is an obstacle, we seek quirkiness.”
Paris-Journal, 1876
19
But why don’t their impressions change over the years? Why do they insist with incomprehensible persistence that when contemplating the ever-changing nature one should preserve this one unchanging impression?
Le Siècle, 1886
20
It is not enough to say that the paintings of artists from the Impressionist group are related. They are all similar to each other, and when the same artist, after a certain period of time of five or ten years, shows his painting, the strange combinations of colors, clumsy strokes, false, flashy, disharmonious tones remain the same, and it seems that you stand in front of paintings that you have already seen before.
Le Siècle, 1886
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