DOI issue:
No. 124 (July, 1903)
DOI article:Dewhurst, Wynford: Impressionist painting: Its genesis and development, [2]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19879#0127
Impressionist Painting
" APRES midi d'eTe" BY d'e.SPAGNAT
de la lumiere selon les objets qu'elle louche ou qu'elle
penetre est, a mon sens, le grand secret et l'originalite •
propre des peintres qu'on appelle les impressionists."
To the day of his death (Jan. 30, 1899), in spite
of the production of many masterpieces of art,
Sisley was a prey to the most galling inquietude.
Leading a life of the most frugal description,
aided by a devoted wife, he was nevertheless
tor ever uncertain ot finding the barest means of
subsistence and so tranquillity of spirit. This
melancholy fact embittered his existence, and
tended to cut short a noble talent and life of
blameless activity.
A contemporary of Sisley, equally gifted, and
more fortunate, is Armand Guillaumin, whose
art, practically unknown in England, is one
of those numerous treats reserved for visitors to
Paris, and at the Bernheim Galleries, rue Lafitte,
much of it is to be seen. Never have I seen
colour so resplendent, pure, and vigorous, yet
perfectly harmonious and poetic. His style, his
subjects, and his character are of the frankest and
simplest. Possessing few tastes outside the exercise
of his art, his life is one long, unceasing, active
devotion to its perfection.
Son of a linendraper, like Corot, he passed his
youth at the shop, and later in some city bureau,
in the meantime attending, when possible, that
curious, professorless Academie Suisse, by the Quai
110
des Orfevres, Paris; two of his comrades there
being Cezanne and Pissarro, I believe. This,
together with study in the rich storehouses of art
so numerous and so easily accessible in Paris, and
work from Nature in the streets and parks and
river-side, constituted his sole art-education. He
tells me that Courbet, Daubigny, and Monet are
the masters who have most influenced his style.
With special stress upon Monet, I should think; for
certain it is that he has profited enormously by the
practice of the men of '70, as did the bulk of the
landscapists of his time.
Some years ago, a lucky speculation in a lottery
of the Credit Foncier brought him the gros lot,
about ,£4,000, which immediately freed him from
further servitude, and gave him complete liberty to
exercise the art he lives for. He was one of the
little group of originals who, in 1874, organised
"Chez Nadar," a collective show of paintings,
celebrated as the first occasion on which the Im-
pressionists tried conclusions with the public. His
contributions, views of Charenton, etc., marked him
as a man of special talent and originality.
Again in 1894 at the Durand-Ruel Galleries there
was an exhibition of about a hundred of his can-
vases, done in various mediums, : which all Paris
visited. Its influence upon students has been
remarkable and widespread. The pictures were
transcripts from Agay, Daimette, and above all
i
" APRES midi d'eTe" BY d'e.SPAGNAT
de la lumiere selon les objets qu'elle louche ou qu'elle
penetre est, a mon sens, le grand secret et l'originalite •
propre des peintres qu'on appelle les impressionists."
To the day of his death (Jan. 30, 1899), in spite
of the production of many masterpieces of art,
Sisley was a prey to the most galling inquietude.
Leading a life of the most frugal description,
aided by a devoted wife, he was nevertheless
tor ever uncertain ot finding the barest means of
subsistence and so tranquillity of spirit. This
melancholy fact embittered his existence, and
tended to cut short a noble talent and life of
blameless activity.
A contemporary of Sisley, equally gifted, and
more fortunate, is Armand Guillaumin, whose
art, practically unknown in England, is one
of those numerous treats reserved for visitors to
Paris, and at the Bernheim Galleries, rue Lafitte,
much of it is to be seen. Never have I seen
colour so resplendent, pure, and vigorous, yet
perfectly harmonious and poetic. His style, his
subjects, and his character are of the frankest and
simplest. Possessing few tastes outside the exercise
of his art, his life is one long, unceasing, active
devotion to its perfection.
Son of a linendraper, like Corot, he passed his
youth at the shop, and later in some city bureau,
in the meantime attending, when possible, that
curious, professorless Academie Suisse, by the Quai
110
des Orfevres, Paris; two of his comrades there
being Cezanne and Pissarro, I believe. This,
together with study in the rich storehouses of art
so numerous and so easily accessible in Paris, and
work from Nature in the streets and parks and
river-side, constituted his sole art-education. He
tells me that Courbet, Daubigny, and Monet are
the masters who have most influenced his style.
With special stress upon Monet, I should think; for
certain it is that he has profited enormously by the
practice of the men of '70, as did the bulk of the
landscapists of his time.
Some years ago, a lucky speculation in a lottery
of the Credit Foncier brought him the gros lot,
about ,£4,000, which immediately freed him from
further servitude, and gave him complete liberty to
exercise the art he lives for. He was one of the
little group of originals who, in 1874, organised
"Chez Nadar," a collective show of paintings,
celebrated as the first occasion on which the Im-
pressionists tried conclusions with the public. His
contributions, views of Charenton, etc., marked him
as a man of special talent and originality.
Again in 1894 at the Durand-Ruel Galleries there
was an exhibition of about a hundred of his can-
vases, done in various mediums, : which all Paris
visited. Its influence upon students has been
remarkable and widespread. The pictures were
transcripts from Agay, Daimette, and above all
i