Studio: international art (28.1903)

Impressionist Painting

Constable and others suggestions from Japanese
art and from that of their own countryman,
Corot.

They have purified and simplified the palette,
discarding blacks, browns, ochres, and muddy
colours generally, together with the use of bitumen
and siccatives of all kinds. These they replaced by
some new and brilliant colours, results of modern
chemical research, such as cadmium pale, violet de
cobalt, garance rose dore, etc., being thus enabled
to attain a much higher degree of luminosity in
their works than was heretofore possible. They
have jettisoned the conventional motive, often
theatrical, and tabooed the literary element, sub-
stituting simpler lines, the manner—a hint from
Japan—of painting scenes as observed from an
altitude, with its curious resultant perspective and
multiplied gradation of values, devoting especial
attention to the study and rendering of colour and
reflection in shadows; and, finally, they have
succeeded in evolving the present wonderfully
brilliant, most effective and charming style. It
is safe to predict that before many moons the
theory upon which the execution of these pictures

is based will be taught in our schools, even the
most academic and conservative.

Here I would remark that these impressionists
in no way form a " school "—a term which implies
a master and scholars. On the contrary, they were
and are completely independent co-workers, banded
by friendship, moved by the same sentiment,
striving to solve the same aesthetic problems. All
of them men of strong and distinct personality,
acknowledging no master but their own inspiration,
and freely dividing and passing on to all who care
to receive it the result of their own individual
reflections and practical experiments. It is only
in comparatively recent times that Claude Monet
has been universally recognised as the man of
paramount originality and virility amongst them.
The very title " Impressionist," by which they are
most popularly known, is a misnomer—a weak and
inconclusive designation, since all artists paint their
impressions. Yet, seeing that it is now accepted as
conveying a special idea, it may stand. " Lumin
arist" probably conveys a more definite and
correct signification.

Examination of the pictures of Monet, Pissarro,

"le bassin A radoub : dunkerque'

162

(By permission of M. Dnrand-Ruel')

by e. boudin