XIV In Conclusion
To gather the loose ends of the argument in one skein.
Impressionism was the natural, the inevitable reaction from the romantic and story-telling art of the forties, fifties, and sixties—a return to nature from the studio, to works of the observation from works of the imagination.
Impressionism developed along three diverging lines:
A. Superficial Impressionism—Monet.
B. Realistic Impressionism—Manet.
C. Substantial Impressionism—Cézanne.
A. Superficial—the painting of light effects, the impressionism of Monet, culminated in the extreme refinements of the pointillists, the Neo-Impressionists, Seurat and Signac.
In superficial Impressionism the last word seems to have been said for the time being. Any number of delightful pictures—light effects—are being painted, and will continue to be painted, but the early enthusiasm has largely subsided.
Superficial Impressionism leads naturally to the painting of pure color effects—color music, orphism, compositional painting. After the last word in the observation of light effects Post-Impressionistic attempts to create pure color effects, irrespective of natural—that is a logical reaction.
B. Realistic Impressionism penetrates a little deeper. While Monet and his followers, Signac and Seurat, dealt more and more with the play of light on the surface of things, Manet and his followers painted closer to the heart of things.
While Monet was content to paint a hay stack twenty times in as many different lights, Manet preferred a touch of life and character in his pictures. While he was first and last a painter, he was not so absorbed in securing purely technical effects as to be wholly blind to the human element, hence his wonderful portraits, his bullfights, his glimpses of city life—pictures big in more senses than one.
Still he and his followers were primarily interested in the aspect of things, the characteristics as distinguished from the fundamental character of things. He penetrated far deeper than Monet, so much deeper the two had little in common, but he did not get so close to the heart that he forgot the skin; he was always a painter of appearances, but in a big as distinguished from a superficial way.
The realistic Impressionism of Manet has by no means run its course. Some of the finest painting in the world has been done and is being done along this line. It is the line of Franz Hals and Velasquez; it is the line of men so different as Whistler and Sargent in their best portraits.
The natural reaction from perfection in this line is higher accentuation of characteristics—in the extreme caricature.
That is, given the last word in the painting of character by great men in a solid way, the logical attempts of new men or lesser men will be the indication of character in a lighter and more superficial way. The penetrating observation of the older men gives way to the keen and playful fancies of the younger. The same sitter yields with the former a powerful portrait, with the latter a fascinating picture which may be quite as revealing both as a likeness and as a characterization.
C. Substantial Impressionism is not so easy to define and differentiate. It is far from superficial but has much in common with realistic.
It is easiest to simply say it is the Impressionism of Cézanne and those who have read what has already been said about Cézanne will understand.
Cézanne was not content to paint either the surface or the characteristics of things or people; he sought to go deeper, to get at the very substance and to place on canvas their elemental qualities.
As a natural result the longer he painted the less interesting his pictures became superficially, but the greater their interest fundamentally.
While Monet became more and more a popular painter, a painter for the dealer and the buyer, Cézanne became more and more a painter’s painter, doing things that only the technically skilled could rightly appreciate.
Interested solely in the profoundest problems of his art and painting only for those who had a very great knowledge of art, he attracted comparatively few followers; the path he followed promised little in the way of immediate fame and rewards.
Still during his last years he had his ardent admirers and after his death his simple, strong constructive, elemental pictures began to be widely appreciated.
They make no pretense to the superficial charm of color or composition that attracts the average observer, but they fascinate every man who studies things long enough to even partially understand what the artist was so earnestly trying to do.
Substantial or Cézanne Impressionism led naturally to the Virile-Impressionism of today, a way of seeing and painting things that is a compound of the Impressionism of Manet with that of Cézanne.
There is a great and glorious future for Virile-Impressionism. Some of the greatest portraits and pictures in the world will be painted with the penetrating vision of a Cézanne, modified by the clear, cool observation of a Manet.
The logical reaction from carrying observation of nature to the extent Cézanne carried it is painting of the substance of things creatively, theoretically, as in Cubism.
Cézanne carried the use of planes imitatively so far that it was but a step to their use arbitrarily and scientifically.
Substantial Impressionism leads naturally to substantial Post-Impressionism; or in other words, the substance of things painted impressionistically (more or less imitatively) leads logically to the painting of the substance of things creatively = Post-Impressionistically.