Seeing Time and Imagining the Elements: Impressionism in San Francisco

Through September 6th, 2010, The De Young museum of San Francisco is home to a sizable portion of the Musée d'Orsay's Impressionist painting collection. The first of two installments to be shown in succession, "The Birth of Impressionism" encompasses the nascent movement as it progressed toward the formation of the Societé Anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. or the group entity responsible for launching eight independent exhibitions between 1874 and 1882. The exhibition follows the various styles and approaches which characterize some of the more famous developments and innovations in late 19th century French painting. It is best understood when viewed in tandem with "Impressionist Paris: City of Light," now on display at the Legion of Honor (through 9/26). This show provides a cultural context for the 'birth of impressionism', examining the developments and innovations that can be seen to have influenced the new style. Transportation technology, financial prosperity and general improvements to the cityscape - such as enlarged boulevards and the installation of gas street lanterns - allowed for unprecedented mobility, comfort, safety, and ultimately, leisure. The architectural overhaul initiated under Napoleon III, one of the focal points of "Impressionist Paris: City of Light,” had created a much more open and hospitable urban center - not to mention a brighter and cleaner city. These factors not only improved life generally speaking, but they also changed the shape of the world and, more importantly, the ways in which people saw and looked at the world. Finally, the documentary photographs of Paris in this period remind us of another 19th century invention which altered and expanded the ways in which reality could be seen and explored - photography.

From the first, the "new painting" was associated with the spectacle of reality. Prominent art critic Louis Émile-Edmond Duranty wrote that a dedication to reality could be seen in the subjects, styles and methods of the independent artists. In one of the first paintings featured at the De Young, Jules Bastien Lepage's "Haymaking" (1877), a peasant woman at the center of the composition appears dazed, as if she had just arisen from sleep, still exhausted and not yet coherent. Her vacant stare, coupled with the monumental treatment of her figure, conveys a striking sense of intimacy.

Frédéric Bazille demonstrates a similarly frank and intimate treatment of reality in his "Family Reunion" (1867). The characters seem to be caught in the act of living but, even more interesting, the central figure - a young woman in blue – glances at the painter as she crosses the patio, as if captured in a snapshot. In another of Bazille's paintings, “Portrait of Renoir” (1867), his friend Pierre-Auguste is depicted in a meditative but relaxed posture, perched in a chair with both knees drawn up toward his chest. Given that formal compositions (the portrait, the still life, the monument, and the landscape) still dominated both painting and photography during this period of history- these casual ‘encounters’ are especially noteworthy.

The association with photography also sheds light on the very idea of impressionism. Coined by Monet himself when he entitled an 1872 tableaux - "Impression: soleil levant" - the term refers to the "impressions" or suggestions made by light in an interaction with both natural and man-made elements: precipitation, wind, steam, smoke – as well as material properties (color, density, absence, etc.). In Monet's painting, the harbour at Le Havre is depicted with loose brush strokes, such that the viewer might imagine the color of a rising sun diffused through the early morning fog. At the same time, the artist captures the traveler's dreamy "impression" of being suspended in another time and place. Just as photography recorded and created images of real things through the impression of light upon silver crystals, the "impressionists" sought to replicate not merely landscapes and subjects, but moments in time and the emotions and feelings a particular scene had stirred up within them.

In "The Magpie" (1868-69) - third gallery - Monet succeeds in illustrating both the luminous whiteness of the atmosphere and the muffled silence of a snowy dawn. The tiny magpie, perched left of center on a pasture fence, serves to emphasize the quiet and the stillness which allowed the painter to notice him. While Alfred Sisley, in his 1878 treatment of a winter landscape, "Snow at Louveciennes,” is more interested in the wind and his terse, bent brushstrokes, used to depict the immovable ground and exposed tree boughs alike, suggest a stormy post meridian. The lone figure advancing toward the vanishing point appears lost in a darkish reverie, as if she too, might soon belong to the wind. Sisley's interest in that particular squall is made clearer when we observe the much softer brushstrokes he used to depict the snow and the sky in other times and places. (One of which, “Snow-covered yard of a country estate in Marlyle-Roi,” 1876, is on display to the right of the Louveciennes painting.)

As a consequence of their interest in time, there is (perhaps quite necessarily) an ephemeral quality in the artists’ treatment of material objects. On this point, Monet’s work is most illustrative. His "The Regatta at Argenteuil" (1874) is an exercise in capturing light in all its effects on the diaphanous substances of air and water; the sky and the river are secondary. Likewise,"The Tuileries" (1876), is a study in the tonalities of afternoon; the things portrayed are absorbed into color, tone, and intensity. Finally, in “The Seine at Vétreuil” (1879), his trees are nearly transparent and the houses appear as though they might lift to join the pinkish clouds at any moment. Monet is not alone however and, in a similar vein, Pissarro and Renoir’s abstractions evoke the fleeting, adventurous beauty of temporality. Camille Pissarro’s “Path Through the Woods in Summer” (1877) captures the essence of a passage – a tunnel-like opening of light through a mass of green – the trees and shrubbery are rather indistinct. And Renoir’s dappled light and vibrant color in “The Swing” (1876) convey the lighthearted excitement of a Saturday in the countryside.

The presence of time in the works described above, vaguely measured as a collection of intimate moments, develops into a sense of immediacy in Degas. Time is not merely the moment as static space but movement, happening: horses are neighing, young ballerinas practice and stockbrokers whisper. For Paul Cézanne, the impressions have the more enduring quality of charged emotion or of desolation: the sinking shapes and broken brushstrokes in “The Hanged Man’s House” (1873) are estranging. Further, the converging planes in the canvas offer a unique perspective, as if we were peering, with some trepidation, at an empty house.

The idea of capturing a moment in time, or the essence of something – that which might have escaped the passing glance or the untrained gaze –, is perhaps inherent to pictorial study but, theoretically speaking, it was a development of the late 19^th century – one which ultimately produced many enthusiastic theorizations of photography and film in the early part of the 20^th century. The notions of sincerity and frankness tentatively explored in the Impressionists’ work, are elaborated, tested and investigated with great vigor and fascination throughout the first half of the 20^th century. Nonetheless, among the tableaux featured at the De Young, one already detects something beyond the carefree voyeurism generally associated with the impressionist style. The historical and political urgency in Manet’s “The Escape of Rochefort” (1881) – on display in the first gallery – reminds us that impressionism was a radical movement, inevitably inspired by a great deal of political turbulence. Henri Rochefort, heroic journalist, politician, and friend of Victor Hugo, was an important figure in the struggle for the 1^st Republic of France and he famously escaped from an island prison in March of 1874. In painting that event, Manet gave historical importance to a very recent past - which was, in and of itself, a great deal revolutionary. Thus, it is important to remember that the Impressionists sought to depict not only the everyday, but also to ennoble and immortalize the present (day). Édouard Manet, passionate protector of these establishment outcasts, summarizes the movement in terms very familiar to the lover of the 20^th century avant-garde, especially in photography and film: "It is sincerity which gives to works of art a character which seems to convert them into acts of protest."