The Impressionist Era

Frances Fowle

THE IMPRESSIONIST ERA The Story of Scotland’s French Masterpieces

National Galleries of Scotland

Frances Fowle

THE IMPRESSIONIST ERA The Story of Scotland’s French Masterpieces

National Galleries of Scotland

16 Eugène Boudin, The Beach at Trouville, 1884

17 Eugène Boudin, Villefranche Harbour, 1892

Oil on panel · 13.7 x 23.4 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

Oil on canvas · 46 x 65 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

16 Eugène Boudin, The Beach at Trouville, 1884

17 Eugène Boudin, Villefranche Harbour, 1892

Oil on panel · 13.7 x 23.4 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

Oil on canvas · 46 x 65 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

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Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Despite this promising start, another decade would pass before the National Galleries of Scotland began to take an interest in Impressionism. Today the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pictures attract visitors from all over the world but, in their day, these artists were viewed as revolutionaries.

It was not until the 1920s that a market for Impressionism developed in Britain since, despite their early enthusiasm for the Barbizon School, most collectors at the end of the nineteenth century objected to the broken brushwork, vivid palette and urban modernism of the ‘modern’ school of painting.

As the critic R.A.M. Stevenson observed in 1893, their luminous canvases upset the tonal harmony of the average Victorian interior: I would not disparage the later Impressionist work, but I feel that the real lover of pictures preserves them from dangerous encounters. He will not toss them, as it were, into a pit to fight it out like dogs and

Detail from Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees, 1889 [plate 28]

cats … he jealously guards his pictures from improper companions and riotous debauches of untrammelled colour.1 While artists such as Millet and Troyon offered a nostalgic view of a fast-disappearing world, painted with a degree of naturalism, the Impressionists provided an uncomfortable reminder of the ways in which industry was encroaching on the landscape.

The Impressionists, like the Barbizon School, were united by their frustration with the jury-led Salon system, leading them, in 1874, to set up the first of a whole series of independent exhibitions. The epithet ‘impressionist’ was first used pejoratively by the critic Louis Leroy to describe the artists’ lack of attention to detail, while the term ‘Impressionism’ derived from a painting by one of the leading members of the group, Claude Monet. The painting that caused such a stir was a view of the harbour at

39

2

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Despite this promising start, another decade would pass before the National Galleries of Scotland began to take an interest in Impressionism. Today the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pictures attract visitors from all over the world but, in their day, these artists were viewed as revolutionaries.

It was not until the 1920s that a market for Impressionism developed in Britain since, despite their early enthusiasm for the Barbizon School, most collectors at the end of the nineteenth century objected to the broken brushwork, vivid palette and urban modernism of the ‘modern’ school of painting.

As the critic R.A.M. Stevenson observed in 1893, their luminous canvases upset the tonal harmony of the average Victorian interior: I would not disparage the later Impressionist work, but I feel that the real lover of pictures preserves them from dangerous encounters. He will not toss them, as it were, into a pit to fight it out like dogs and

Detail from Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees, 1889 [plate 28]

cats … he jealously guards his pictures from improper companions and riotous debauches of untrammelled colour.1 While artists such as Millet and Troyon offered a nostalgic view of a fast-disappearing world, painted with a degree of naturalism, the Impressionists provided an uncomfortable reminder of the ways in which industry was encroaching on the landscape.

The Impressionists, like the Barbizon School, were united by their frustration with the jury-led Salon system, leading them, in 1874, to set up the first of a whole series of independent exhibitions. The epithet ‘impressionist’ was first used pejoratively by the critic Louis Leroy to describe the artists’ lack of attention to detail, while the term ‘Impressionism’ derived from a painting by one of the leading members of the group, Claude Monet. The painting that caused such a stir was a view of the harbour at

26 Paul Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon, 1888 Oil on canvas · 72.2 x 91 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

26 Paul Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon, 1888 Oil on canvas · 72.2 x 91 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

29 Vincent van Gogh, Orchard in Blossom, 1888 Oil on canvas · 54 x 65.2 cm · National Galleries of Scotland

29 Vincent van Gogh, Orchard in Blossom, 1888 Oil on canvas · 54 x 65.2 cm · National Galleries of Scotland