Art

Water Lilies Art Print
Monet, Claude
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Impressionism, as exemplified by Monet, owes much to Japanese art, itself impressionistic and eminently suggestive while showing no trace of the Western schools. Native critics claim that the false perspective and extravagant character of Japanese painting, as indicated by Utamaro and continued by Toyokuni and culminating in Yeizan, all of whom have influenced modern French painting, is a decadence originating in crude efforts to reproduce poor prints of European pictures, especially those of the Dutch school. But the real Impressionist of Japan was not one of these, nor was he the prolific Hokusai, familiar to the Western world through his book illustrations, but, in fact, Hiroshige whose atmospheres antedated those of Manet. In this connection let us add that Monet’s idea of painting a single haystack in differing atmospheres was derived from the Japanese.

Water Lilies Art Print
Monet, Claude
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Of Monet it has been well said that, while as regards particulars he ignored the face of nature, he secured a desired general effect by painting it, even as did Manet, as if seen through eyes but half open. As result, its parts were emphasized by the blending of details in clusters of light and shade. Thus, it is claimed, the resulting ensemble gives an impression of truth more adequate than by any other means. Impressionistic chiaroscuro, as exemplified by Manet, Monet, and Pissarro, differs to some extent from that of former schools and radically from that of the Dutch masters, since its lights are not concentrated on the central subject, but are distributed somewhat evenly over the entire grouping.

Water Lilies, 1916 Art Print
Monet, Claude
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Water Lilies Art Print
Monet, Claude
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Water Lilies Morning Art Print
Monet, Claude
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Impressionism, while anti-intellectual, is also a total severance from outworn traditions of color, form, and value, and in fact it terminated an inadequate past. To the cult, this breaking away meant progress along all lines. Nevertheless, Impressionism must be considered chiefly as the experiment of those who, though never achieving form and linear rhythm, yet cleared away much rubbish of convention, while standing on the shifting line between the old truth and the larger yet to be. In certain of its tendencies, Impressionism easily lends itself to mere exaggeration and so becomes a retrograde art. Now when employed by a master, and therefore judiciously, exaggeration heightens expression, but, in the hands of the incompetent, it is a clumsy tool which they are prone to use. Ignoring the underlying and stable verities of nature, the Impressionist is enamored of the outward in its most fleeting appearance, that of atmosphere, for the landscape, however picturesque, is to him but a body to be clothed after the manner of his school. To center attention on color effects he distorts outlines.

Because in a general survey the eye fails to grasp the minutiae of nature, and even its correct outlines, he indicates objects, especially if in motion, by mere splashes of color. If an extremist, he utterly disregards detail so that, aside from atmosphere, the result is something unseen in nature save through the eyes of one who yet prides himself on painting in the open, rather than from memory in the studio. As a school, though by no means as an influence, Impressionism is fast disappearing from the land of its birth.