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EXHIBITION DATES
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CHRONOLOGY
TEXTS ON THE EXHIBITION
EXHIBITION
LIST OF LOANERS
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Photographs and information for download on www.albertina.at under PRESS.
EXHIBITION DATES
Title
Impressionism. Painting Light
Press conference
September 10, 2009, 10:00 a.m.
Opening
September 10, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Duration
September 11, 2009 until January 10, 2010
Venue
Jeanne and Donald Kahn Galleries
Objects
193 works, there from 137 paintings and 56 objects
Curator
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Heinz Widauer, assistance Gisela Fischer
This exhibition was conceived by the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation
Corboud, Cologne.
Catalogue
Impressionism. Painting Light
Texts by Iris Schaefer, Caroline von Saint-George, Katja Lewerentz,
Gisela Fischer, Heinz Widauer
Published by SKIRA, Milano in German and English. Ca. 3oo pages.
Available at the Albertina’s museum shop and at www.albertina.at
Sponsors
Contact
Wiener Städtische and CHSH
Albertinaplatz 1, A-1010 Vienna
T +43 (0)1 534 83-0
[email protected], www.albertina.at
Press Department
Verena Dahlitz (head)
T +43 (0)1 534 83-510, M +43 (0)699 121 78 720, [email protected]
Barbara Schober
T +43 (0)1 534 83-511, M +43 (0)699 109 81 743, [email protected]
Partner of the Albertina
Sponsors of the exhibition
Media partner
IMPRESSIONISM
PAINTING LIGHT
11 September 2009 – 10 January 2010
Comprising major works by Caillebotte, Cézanne, Courbet, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet,
Pissarro, Renoir, Signac, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, the Albertina’s autumn
exhibition Impressionism – Painting Light, on display from 11 September 2009 until 10 January
2010, presents the most comprehensive survey on this subject ever shown in the Germanspeaking world. With about 200 exhibits – including 125 paintings and 56 historical objects and
painting utensils – the exhibition offers a foray into the fascinating world of French
Impressionism, from its roots in plein-air painting to the optical color experiments of
Pointillism and Post-Impressionism.
The extraordinary show provides new insights into the genesis of Impressionism, as well as into
its techniques and modes of painting. It answers questions like “What is an impression?”,
“Inside or outside?”, or “When is a painting finished?” and retells the story of Impressionism
from a new perspective on the basis of exemplary works and historical objects from the artists’
estates.
75 paintings – landscapes, garden scenes, pictures of metropolitan Paris with its cafés and
amusement places – come from the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Foundation Corboud, Cologne.
The exhibition includes further superb loans from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, the Národní galerie, Prague, the Szépművészeti Múzeum,
Budapest, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, a.o., as well as works from the holdings of the
Albertina’s Batliner Collection.
The numerous original objects and painting utensils elucidate the painter’s daily routine, how
he approached his motifs, and how he prepared and executed his paintings. Among other
items, visitors will find Vincent van Gogh’s perspective frame and palette, Georges Seurat’s
palette, and a ballet shoe that belonged to Edgar Degas.
Didactic materials such as an installation explaining optical phenomena or x-ray and infrared
pictures will allow the visitor to literally grasp the genesis of Impressionist works. The
exhibition sheds light on achievements in painting technology such as the introduction of flat
bristle brushes, the invention of tube paint, or the development of ready-to-use canvases and
reveals how these new possibilities influenced the Impressionists’ method of painting, mobility,
and technical demands and thus opened up new paths for them.
“To present Impressionism, an art movement capitalized on repeatedly, of which everything
seems to have been shown and on which everything seems to be said, in an exciting, manyfaceted way has nearly become an art itself today,” says Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Director of
the Albertina. “If we have been successful all the same, it is the unique look behind the scenes
which has made this possible – i.e. granting equal importance to the technology and the history
of art on the basis of the research project Painting Techniques of Impressionism and
Postimpressionism [of the Walraff-Richartz-Museums, Cologne].”
This exhibition was conceived by the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875/76
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Claude Monet
View of Vétheuil, 1881
Albertina, Vienna - Batliner Collection
Photo: © Fotostudio Heinz Preute, Vaduz
Berthe Morisot
The Harbour of Nice, 1881/82
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum &
Fondation Corboud, Cologne, © RBA, Köln
CHRONOLOGY
1862
Édouard Manet portrayed Jeanne Duval, the mistress of the poet Charles Baudelaire.
The painting caused irritation because of its sketchiness. In 1863 and 1865 Manet
exhibited at the Salon and was criticized for the modern flatness and realism of his
works.
1870/71
Franco-Prussian War. William was crowned German emperor in Versailles. The rise of
the republican Paris Commune, in which Gustave Courbet was actively involved, was
suppressed. He fled to Switzerland, where he died in 1877.
1873
Vienna Universal Exhibition. The world economic crisis put an end to the boom of the
Gründerzeit.
1874
The first of altogether eight exhibitions of the Société des artistes anonymes – the
future Impressionists – was held in the studio of the photographer Nadar. In his
devastating review, Louis Leroy referred to the title of Monet’s work Impression, soleil
levant in order to give the group a derisive name.
1875/76
Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, the most prominent
Impressionists of the first hour, painted several versions of the same motif side by
side in order to explore the differences between the group’s style and the artists’
individual expression.
1877
For the Impressionists’ third exhibition, Camille Pissarro – the Impressionists’ and
Neo-Impressionists’ father figure – and Edgar Degas – who never viewed himself as
an Impressionist, although he did exhibit with the group – used white frames they had
designed themselves in order to create a unity between picture and frame.
1878
Paris World Fair.
1879
In the year of the Impressionists’ fourth exhibition, the periodical La vie moderne
appeared. It was to become the mouthpiece of Impressionism.
1880/81
Failures, disagreement, and cancellations accompanied the Impressionists’ fifth and
sixth exhibitions. Degas, who had revived the pastel technique, and others pursuing
realistic tendencies prevailed. Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and Sisley boycotted the sixth
exhibition.
1882
The art dealer Durand-Ruel organized the seventh exhibition. Degas’ influence was
curtailed. The artists presented their pictures in different kinds of frames: Pissarro
used rubbed gilded frames, Gauguin plain white wood strips.
Due to a stock market crash, Paul Gauguin lost his job as a banker and decided to
support himself and his family with painting.
1884
A new avant-garde group, the Artistes Indépendants, headed by Georges Seurat,
exhibited for the first time, thus paving the way for Neo-Impressionism, a derivative
of Impressionism based on scientific theories. Due to its dotted manner of painting,
the name “Pointillism” established itself, whereas the artists preferred the term
“Divisionism”, since the style’s principle was the division of colours.
1885
In Normandy, Paul Cézanne, who had been introduced into Impressionism by his
fatherly friend Pissarro, began to set permanence and stability against the play of
light and shade. He was instrumental in overcoming Impressionism and prepared the
analytical compositional approach of Cubism.
1886
The Impressionists’ eighth and last exhibition was held above the restaurant La
Maison Dorée. Van Gogh, coming from Holland, arrived in Paris in March. Although
he initially enthusiastically adopted the Impressionists’ light palette, he soon sought
to further intensify its effects of colour and light. In 1888 he moved to Provence,
leaving Impressionism behind.
1888
Following a brief Impressionist phase, Gauguin retired to Pont-Aven, where he cofounded Cloisonnism, a style characterized by two-dimensionality and black outlines.
From the 1890s onwards, after paying Van Gogh a short visit in Arles, he increasingly
sojourned in the South Seas.
1889
The Eiffel Tower became the landmark of the third Paris World Fair, where works by
Manet, Cézanne, Monet, and Pissarro were on display.
1893/94
The Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte left his collection of Impressionist
works to the French state. Only parts were accepted and displayed in the Musée du
Luxembourg instead of the Louvre.
1898–
1898–1900
The Impressionists finally had their international breakthrough, exhibiting
successfully in London, Munich, and Berlin.
1926
Shortly before his death, Monet presented his monumental Nymphea cycle to the
French state. Monet was the one who had developed the art of Impressionism most
consistently and with his late work paved the way for abstract art.
TEXTS ON THE EXHIBITION
EXHIBITION
Hall
Hall 11- Text 1
“Impression – I was certain of it. … Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”
Louis Leroy about Monet’s Impression: Sunrise, 1874
In 1874 the art critic Louis Leroy coined the term “Impressionism” on the occasion of an exhibition organized at
the initiative of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and
Auguste Renoir at the studio of the photographer Nadar. In using the term “impression”, Leroy had made a
derisive judgement: the works in question rendered mere visual perceptions and resembled cursory sketches.
The art critic had no idea that he had named a stylistic epoch which today numbers among the most well-known
artistic movements in art history.
Because of their unpretentious subjects and unparalleled handling of the brush, the Impressionists were
rejected time and again by the jury of the annual Paris Salon, the dominant authority in art matters. An
impression – the capturing of a motif outdoors by taking into account reflections of light and the rendering of a
transitory moment – was not regarded as a proper category in terms of artistic merit within academic painting,
which was preferred by the Salon. Relying on seemingly arbitrarily chosen views, flecked brushwork, and pure,
unmixed colours, the artist arrested momentary manifestations of reality under changing light conditions for
the first time. In so doing, the Impressionists used light-coloured painting supports and incorporated the
primed canvas into their depictions.
This novel view of the world and the new manner of painting were preceded by trailblazing inventions: tube
paints, the development of prepared and ready-to-use canvases, and the production of new painting utensils.
All of these tools were instrumental in enabling the Impressionists to paint directly in front of their motifs and
particularly out-of-doors.
Hall
Hall 1 – Text 2
“The Impressionist sees that the shadows on the snow are blue in the sunlight; unhesitatingly, he paints blue
shadows. This almost makes the public laugh. … The Impressionist paints his landscapes violet. And so the
public gradually begins to become angry.“
Théodore Duret, 1878
The observation that objects alter their colours in changing light conditions – at different times of day and in
different seasons – encouraged the Impressionists to deliberately challenge the concept of local colours and the
conventional rendering of shadows. In their attempts to solely depict what could be seen, they freed art not
only from historical and mythological contents, but also from colour values rooted in visual habits. They
disassociated colours from their attachment to tangible objects and rendered them as pure optical values,
which they wove into a floating, flat fabric in the form of tiny dabs, dots, and strokes. Thus they overcame the
lighting conditions in an academic painter’s studio, which constantly remained the same. Depending on the
time of day and season, the sun bathes an object in light tinted yellow, orange, or red; the colour of its shadow
does not appear to be grey, but violet, greenish, or blue, depending on light intensity, humidity, and
temperature.
Snowscapes were a welcome opportunity to deal with the phenomenon of coloured shadow, since the snow’s
reflecting white surface responds more readily to changes in light intensity and air humidity than other
substances.
Another particularly popular motif among pleinairists for capturing momentary effects of light and colour were
shimmering water surfaces altering their appearance under different weather conditions and with the changing
intensity and colour of light. The generous and seemingly irregular brushwork, hitherto reserved for oil
sketches, in combination with the white priming of the canvas that was partially allowed to shine through, was
particularly suitable to render these flickering, iridescent impressions.
Hall 22- Text 1
Several Impressionists of the first hour, including Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, had met in the studios of
recognized history painters such as that of Charles Gleyre. Private institutions offered future artists who had
been rejected by the Académie des Beaux-Arts affordable drawing lessons and nude drawing classes.
The Academy had a great impact on the official Paris art scene. It appointed the members of the admission jury
for the Paris Salon, so that artists affiliated with the Academy enjoyed preferential treatment. Academic art
education continued to follow the customary Neo-Classicist rules established in the seventeenth century.
History painting was considered to be the superior genre. Each painting was expected to be precisely drawn and
executed in a smooth, accomplished manner. Having become rigid over the centuries, the works in line with the
academic tradition – preferably depicting nude women in mythological guise – were conventional and
expressionless. History paintings were prepared in the studio by means of preliminary drawings and a small oil
sketch, the latter defining the pictorial conception in terms of colour and composition.
The Impressionists discarded this step-by-step preparation of pictures, since it stood in the way of an
instantaneous rendering of perception. However, the Impressionists did appreciate the aesthetic qualities of
the oil sketch – its swift and spontaneous style – and thus made it the basis of their manner of painting.
Hall 2 - Text 2
In his ambition to paint nature as it was perceived by the eye, Charles-François Daubigny immediately preceded
the Impressionists. Daubigny belonged to a group of landscape painters who rendered the forests of
Fontainebleau near the village of Barbizon with coarse brushwork and in the open air – en plein air. Contrary to
academic painting, with its mythological and historical subject matter, the artists of the Barbizon School were
concerned with painting real landscapes. They placed carefully harmonized colours next to each other, applying
them wet in wet, with a broad brush. Thus they created a pictorial unit within the narrow spectrum of grey or
olive-brown tonal values.
Gustave Courbet displayed great virtuosity when it came to creating a composition unified by homogeneous
colouring. He painted these works very rapidly, often during a single session. His art had nothing in common
with smooth and accurate academic painting; he preferred a broad brush, a spatula, or a palette knife to apply
his paints. In spite of dark underpainting and subdued tonality, both Courbet and the landscapists of the
Barbizon School anticipated the flecked manner of Impressionist painting that was to follow.
In Château de Chillon before a Thunderstorm, Courbet impressively employed a dark palette, producing superb
atmospheric effects. The painting is probably based on a photograph.
Hall 3 – Text 1
“It is the artist’s task to choose the proper frame for his pictures. It should harmonize with the painting and
enhance its effect.”
Edgar Degas
The Impressionists’ goal to render subjective visual experiences had profoundly changed the way in which a
painting was seen as an objective copy of reality. Impressionism also gave a radically new impetus to the
customary exhibition practice. Dissatisfied with the Salon, where a painting was merely part of a wall opulently
covered with pictures, the artists began to plan the framing and hanging of their works and develop alternatives
to the gilded and elaborately decorated frames. The choice of a frame’s colour was based on the principle of
complementary contrast and the wish to achieve an intense brilliance.
Chevreul had already scientifically explored the influence of a frame’s colour on a picture’s effect in 1839 and
recommended a neutral frame attuned to the dominant colour in the picture. Accordingly, white wooden frames
turned out to be ideal for the Impressionists’ purposes: plain and mostly smooth, or decorated with
unpretentious ripple moulding.
The Impressionists preferred to hang their pictures at large intervals, either on a single level or in not two rows
at the most, arranged on top of each other. They rejected the Salon’s confusing so-called “Petersburg” hanging
style, which was from floor to ceiling. These new principles were first implemented in the international
exhibitions organized by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
Soon the Impressionist presentation concept also discarded varnishing (in French vernis): in order to create a
smooth, shining surface that lent the colours more depth, a transparent, lacquer-like layer of dissolved resin had
commonly been applied to the topmost paint layer. This traditional finish of paintings was added on the day of
an exhibition’s opening to paintings already hung – thus the term “vernissage” for an exhibition opening.
Hall 3 – Text 2
“Out in the open, Claude Monet will prefer an English garden to the corner of a forest. He would rather find a
human trace everywhere. He has a special fondness for nature that has received a modern guise through the
hand of man.”
Émile Zola, 1868
In Impressionism, the garden picture combines the artistic rendering of sensory perception with modern life in
a very special way. During the second half of the nineteenth century, in the wake of the gardening movement, it
became fashionable to cultivate an intimate piece of nature. Gardens became private recreation areas and
gardening, a popular pastime. The garden – nature designed by man – was considered a work of art that was in
contrast to the romantic idea of untamed nature. From the very outset, the Impressionists loved painting
private vegetable and kitchen gardens on the one hand and public parks on the other.
Motifs from nature viewed at a close range had already proven to be an ideal subject for the landscapists of the
Barbizon School. However, the Impressionists countered the latter’s realistic rendering of wild woodlands with
intimate garden scenes. In the Impressionists’ pictures, the atmospheric dissolution of nature turned into a
decorative, vibrating coloured surface.
Monet and Renoir remained passionate gardeners for the rest of their lives. Pissarro, on the other hand,
devoted his art to the life and work in the countryside surrounding the village of Pontoise.
Hall 4 – Text 1
“We must not be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth
to study beautiful nature.”
Paul Cézanne, 1905
The Impressionists did not invent plein-air painting, but they were the first to deliberately turn it into an artistic
programme. Flowering gardens and park landscapes, as well as idyllic seaside resorts and riversides either
bathed in sunlight or obscured by snow and mist, numbered among their preferred subjects.
Whereas the artists of the Barbizon School executed studies of nature outdoors and subsequently worked them
into finished paintings in their studios, this division of the working process into several steps no longer applied
to the Impressionists. Spontaneous painting in the open air, executed with a cursory brush and in a sketchy
manner of painting, became the artistic expression of subjective sensual perception.
Painting out-of-doors in changeable weather conditions – in great heat, strong winds, heavy rain, or at freezing
temperatures – was not always easy to accomplish. The Impressionists adopted from their predecessors the
latest achievements, such as portable paint cases with backstraps for carrying brushes and paints. Such utensils
as parasols, folding stools, and mobile easels facilitated work in the open air. Canvases were rolled up; like
panels and millboards, they were available in standardized formats that fitted exactly into the mountings of
customary paint cases. Field easels that could be adapted to uneven terrain were used for larger formats.
Frequently, these aids have left visible traces in the paintings, providing information about their place of origin
and how they were done. Indentations and unpainted areas near the margins of a painting support suggest that
it was once attached to a field easel or paint case. Grains of sand, blossoms, or buds embedded in the paint layer
prove that a work was executed out-of-doors.
Hall 4 – Text 2
“These paint tubes, which are so easy to carry, allow us to really paint from nature. Without these tubes of
paint, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley, no Pissarro, nor what the gazetteers call
Impressionism.”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
In the nineteenth century, painting materials were available in abundance, facilitating the artists’ work
outdoors.
The establishment of art academies in the seventeenth century had profoundly changed the education of
artists, who had hitherto been apprenticed to masters to be trained in their workshops. Now there was a clear
distinction between manual and artistic work, and specialists were entrusted with the production of painting
materials and utensils. If formerly artists had to mix and prepare their own pigments, the Impressionists could
resort to ready-to-use paints and immediately set to work in front of their motifs.
The most important accomplishment for plein-air painting was paint in tubes that could be hermetically closed
so that their contents would not dry up. Moreover, synthetically produced colours in particularly light and
intense shades had been developed. New brush forms allowed an unprecedented wealth of artistic expression,
with the flat bristle brush being of particular importance for the Impressionists. Canvas was produced on
mechanical looms in the requested length, and roll mills accelerated the fabrication of paints. Painting supports
were offered ready to use and in standardized formats – with grey, yellow, or pink priming and stretched over
frames.
It was primarily this large supply of pre-fabricated painting utensils that made Impressionist plein-air painting
possible. The industrial age, with its innovative discoveries and inventions in the fields of chemistry, physics,
and mineralogy, revolutionized the technological prerequisites of painting and became the driving force behind
the development of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. As instrumental as paint manufacturers and
dealers may have been for Impressionism, they emerged first and foremost driven by economic considerations.
Hall 4 – Text 3
“Monet is just an eye, but what an eye.”
Paul Cézanne
With Monet’s art, landscape painting, with fifty years to look back on, entered into its final phase. Claude Monet
devoted his painting entirely to the depiction of light. Not only did he mould Impressionism, but also developed
this pre-modern movement further, well into the twentieth century. He tirelessly worked in situ, both during his
extensive sojourns on the Seine – in Argenteuil, Vétheuil, and Giverny – and on his numerous journeys.
Monet’s characteristic compositional principle during the 1880s relied on a spatial illusionism projected onto
the two-dimensional picture plane, which the artist combined with strongly overlapping surfaces. His use of
colour and handling of the brush distinctly differentiated between foreground and background: while the
foreground was mostly done in warm, vital hues applied in the form of lively splashes, the background features
cool and delicate tones, with the brushstrokes carefully placed next to each other. None of the individual motifs
was pushed to the fore, and they were subordinated to the colour harmony of the whole.
Monet’s repeating one and the same motif at different times of day and in different seasons, thus taking into
account changing weather and light conditions, eventually prompted his famous series, begun in the 1890s.
Relying entirely on visual perception, these pictures ultimately came to be composed of an abstract fabric of
pure colour and light values. In his late work, Monet increasingly incorporated underpainting into his
compositions, such as to capture a foggy atmosphere or light reflection on water. Eventually, this led to the
complete dissolution of form. In Monet’s famous Nympheas we are now able to recognize the precursors of
Abstract Expressionism, particularly the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Marc Rothko.
Hall 6
Gustave Caillebotte, an Impressionist of the first hour, was an art patron and collector of works by his friends.
Having inherited a substantial fortune, he was in a position to mitigate the financial problems of his fellow
combatants. He died in 1894, leaving his significant and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings to
the Louvre in the hope that this would eventually result in success for the new painting style. But even twenty
years after the first Impressionist exhibition, the country’s culture officials could not bring themselves to
recognize Impressionism. Two thirds of the collection was rejected, and the rest was not transferred to the
Louvre, but to the Musée du Luxembourg. Today the latter works form the heart of the Musée d’Orsay’s
collection of Impressionists. A large part of the discarded paintings was later sold to American collectors and is
now preserved in the major museums of the United States.
What strikes one about Caillebotte’s own paintings are the spectacular perspective and its daring
foreshortening. The dynamism of diagonals corresponds with the Impressionists’ ambition to direct attention to
the painter’s vantage point. When the group of the Impressionists fell apart in the 1880s, Caillebotte withdrew
to the countryside. His paintings done in Paris are informed by a pronounced realism. His late works show
primarily Monet’s influence. Interested in the transitoriness of momentary events and in atmospheric effects
and light conditions, he mostly worked near riverbanks or in his garden, employing light colours and a loose
brushwork.
Hall 77- Text 1
“Drawing is not the form, it is the way of seeing the form.”
Edgar Degas
A work’s spontaneous and dynamic character is not necessarily linked to its having been painted outdoors. For
many artists, the sketch-like manner of painting was only one method of suggesting instantaneity. Such artists
as Degas, Manet, or Toulouse-Lautrec found different ways of simulating the movement of light and bodies.
In 1874, Degas presented ten works in the Impressionists’ first exhibition. However, he never viewed himself as
a member of the movement. He juxtaposed the freedom and idyll of the Impressionist landscape with the
intimacy of figural scenes and interiors from Parisian nightlife; instead of sketching out in the open air, he
carefully planned his works in the studio. His inclination lay more with Realism than Impressionism.
Degas’ dynamic pictorial constructions reflect the modern world. He presents fragments of everyday life: such
fleeting moments as the pose of a dancer or such trivial procedures as bodily hygiene. Landscapes are an
exception in his œuvre. His stylistic means comprise unusual perspectives, close-ups, extreme views from below
or above, abrupt cropping, and the sequential repetition of a motif.
What artists like Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec shared with the Impressionists was their search for a new way of
looking at things and their interest in a motif’s altered appearance in changing light conditions. Their formal
approach, however, was different.
Hall 7 – Text 2
“Never again shall I touch a brush!”
Edgar Degas
In the 1870s Edgar Degas discovered for himself what was considered an outdated technique: pastel painting.
Unlike oil paint, pastel chalk, made from compressed powdered pigments and the additive of a water-soluble
binder, is considered pure colour. The coloured crayons can easily be mixed and produce a great variety of
nuances. Pastels are equally suitable for linear drawing and for rapidly covering surfaces with colour, and one
can achieve both matt and shining textures. Therefore, movement, momentary impressions, and the vivacity of
changing light effects and colour reflections can be perfectly rendered.
In the early nineteenth century, pastel painting still played a subordinate role. It only served for sketching
preparatory studies and was rarely used for finished works. Many Impressionists, such as Manet, Renoir, and
Toulouse-Lautrec, took advantage of this original function of pastel painting, which was to outline and capture a
first pictorial idea. This traditional medium saw its acme and what was probably the most unconventional use of
pastel painting in the art of Edgar Degas. From the 1890s onwards, Degas worked almost exclusively with pastel
crayons.
Hall 8 – Text 1
By stating that he had never had a studio, Monet, like no other artist before him, propagated spontaneous
painting in the open air. In reality, however, none of the Impressionists dispensed entirely with working in the
studio or using compositional aids in order to prepare his paintings. Examinations with infrared and ultraviolet
photography and X-rays allow us to draw conclusions about the Impressionists’ methods that will shed new
light on plein-air painting.
Contemporaries describe pleinairism as pure light painting. Both natural light and artificial candlelight were
considered natural light sources. The point was to renounce the static, diagonal incidence of light that
determined academic studio painting. En plein air – in the open air – ostensibly refers to the landscape genre,
but the Impressionists’ study of nature and landscape painting were only one among several approaches.
Interiors, still lifes, and figural scenes likewise lent themselves to the rendering of vivid light effects. Much the
same, sketchiness and dynamic cropping were only one method of giving the impression of an incidental
moment. In fact, the Impressionists occasionally also prepared their works with sketches and resorted to timetested techniques. Underdrawing was used to carefully outline the compositions. Marker points and the division
of the picture surface into a grid facilitated the transfer of a sketch to the large format of a painting.
The accurate planning of compositions and colour schemes eventually resulted in the Post-Impressionists’
systematic division of colours. Although they also worked outdoors in order to make preliminary sketches
directly in front of a motif, they elaborated on their strict pictorial conceptions only in the studio.
Hall 8 – Text 2
“This perspective frame consists of two long stakes; the frame can be attached to them either way with strong
wooden pegs. So on the shore or in the meadow or in the fields one can look through it as through a window,
the vertical lines and the perpendicular line of the frame and the diagonal lines and the point of intersection, or
else the division into squares, certainly give a few basic markers, with the help of which one can make a firm
drawing from the indications of the main lines and proportions.”
Vincent van Gogh, 1882
When Van Gogh arrived in Paris, he was forced to find out that Impressionism was already outdated and that
contemporary artists were captivated by Pointillism, whose proponents had declared the latest physical and
optical laws of colour dispersion the foundation of their painting.
Van Gogh’s art changed incredibly fast. In Paris he depicted the suburbs with their amusement establishments,
the mills and dance halls in Montmartre, relying on a light-coloured palette and Impressionist and Pointillist
techniques. In so doing, the artist, who had diligently taught himself outside of the academies, relied upon
several aids. In Paris he continued to use the perspective frame, to which he had already resorted in Holland: “A
device described in a work by Albrecht Dürer” (Vincent van Gogh). Infrared reflectography reveals pencilled
perspective lines underneath the oil paint in several pictures he executed in the metropolis on the Seine which
he had used to transfer the perspective frame’s grid to the canvas. Sometimes these lines can even be perceived
with the naked eye.
A new working method, which Van Gogh only began to use in Paris, was offered by the so-called “paint box”: a
Chinese red lacquer tea box containing threads of wool in different colours by which he could visualize the
effect of various combinations. Vincent went about choosing his paints extremely economically, in order not to
excessively burden the budget of his brother, who financed the artist’s living. Vincent bought paints in large
tubes, particularly those colours he could not produce himself. The unprecedented abundance of shades went
hand in hand with the marketing of new synthetically produced pigments. They seem to have also been cheap:
their colours turned out to be unstable, so that many a picture by Van Gogh has lost some of its brilliance over
the years.
Hall 9
Over the years, many Impressionist paintings have changed their original appearance. The frequent loss of their
original frames – plain whitish grey wood strips – or the falsification of the colours and brushwork through the
subsequent application of a thick layer of varnish often occurred during the artists’ lifetime.
Traces of natural ageing are due to the frequently unavoidable impact of light and climatic conditions.
Mutations caused by the excessive darkening of the natural tone of unprimed painting supports – such as
mahogany or poplar, which is pure white originally – are particularly eminent and irritating. Similarly, the fading
of millboards frequently accounts for a decline in the colours’ brilliance. The use of unsuitable materials and
colour additives that proved to affect the paints’ durability have also led to damage and cracked paint layers or
caused the colours to pale.
Many alterations were carried out by another hand and date from a later period. Frequently, these interventions
happened out of a lack of understanding for the Impressionists’ artistic intentions. In order to adapt the
pictures to the contemporary taste, “aesthetic” repairs were made with regard to the composition and
colouring. Areas of the painting support, be it canvas or panel, that had deliberately left unpainted by the artist
were considered unfinished and subsequently filled in. The supports were trimmed or made larger in order to
squeeze a picture into the desired frame, and the white wood strips were replaced by elaborate gilded frames.
Hall 10
“The Neo-Impressionist does not paint with dots, he divides.”
Paul Signac
In 1886 the Impressionists’ last group exhibition presented works by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. The
paintings’ composition of identically sized coloured dots immediately released fervent discussions. Relying on
modern scientific treatises, Seurat and Signac propagated a new manner of painting. They called for the
exclusive use of pure, unmixed colours that were to be applied closely next to each other so that only by
blending in the spectator’s eye would they create a third colour – the colour proper. This technique, which
Seurat called “Divisionism”, was based on the division of the colour circle into its spectral colours. Due to the
dotted manner of painting, this method became eventually known as “Pointillism”. The critic Félix Fénéon, in
turn, coined the term “Neo-Impressionism” for this phenomenon. Moreover, the Pointillists assigned a powerful
expressive potential to the undulating line: whereas rising lines triggered cheerful emotions, descending lines
suggested sadness.
The rhythmical application of paint in the Pointillist manner, which required extreme precision, made it
impossible for the artists to paint large pictures out-of-doors. Plein-air painting on small panels was now limited
to study purposes. What looked like a resort to the pre-Impressionist tradition of studio painting was thus
prompted by practical considerations. After all, it was not the instantaneous impression the Pointillists sought
to capture. They were concerned with clarity, rigidity, and pictorial stability, by which they wanted to counter
Impressionism. In this, they overcame Impressionism much like Cézanne, heralding a new artistic development,
one of whose results was Fauvism.
Hall 11
“Blue hurrah, piss on grey.”
Paul Signac
The self-taught artist Paul Signac developed an interest in painting through an exhibition of Monet’s works.
However, when in 1885 he saw a painting by George Seurat, he was enthused about the new theory of optical
colour dispersion and the colours’ mingling in the spectator’s eye. Signac became the Pointillists’ mouthpiece. In
1899 his trailblazing book D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme [From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism]
appeared, which turned out to be instrumental in the spread of the movement. In his house in Paris he held his
Monday soirées, a meeting point for artists, writers, and critics; Signac’s villa in Saint-Tropez eventually became
a magnet for the Fauves, a group of painters gathered around Matisse, Vlaminck, and Derain that emerged from
Pointillism in 1905.
Signac discovered at an early stage that the envisaged mixture of the colours in the spectator’s eye did not
really work. What was perceived was rather a visual vibration of different-coloured dots. Thus Signac, after
Seurat’s premature death, abandoned the Pointillist method and worked with wider strokes and larger patches
of colour instead of dots. Signac now divided the colours in order to reach maximum contrasts. By juxtaposing
colours from opposite sides of the spectrum, he enhanced their intensity: so-called “complementary colour
contrasts” emerged in the fragmented forms of brushstrokes and coloured lines. At the same time, these
strokes and lines also created a decorative fabric, so that the paintings resembled woven multicoloured rugs.
Hall 12
In consequence of the Japanese Empire’s opening up towards the West, Japanese art and culture became known
in Europe around the mid-nineteenth century. Ukiyo-e woodcuts gave new impetus to the Impressionists’
approach and overthrew traditional compositional principles. Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by the
woodcuts’ colourfulness, two-dimensionality, and extreme perspectives and their subject matter alike, which
addressed new aspects of everyday social life. The Japanese term ukiyo-e can be associated with change and
transitoriness and refers to a genre inspired from urban life, with its entertainment districts, actors, and
courtesans. Clear outlines, a tendency towards two-dimensionality, and the cropping of motifs ensured the
spatial dynamism of these “pictures of the floating world”.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who is known for having freely adapted various styles and techniques to his art,
relied on these devices in his pictures of the Parisian demimonde, much like Edgar Degas. Toulouse-Lautrec’s
credo was to break rules, both as an artist and in his private life. In his posters and colour lithographs, he
developed ever-bolder compositions, neglecting conventional light effects and objective detail. In contrast to
the Impressionists’ form-dissolving painting style, Lautrec’s art is marked by linearity. However, irritating
perspectives upset the facile legibility of distinctly outlined coloured areas and stylized form. Lautrec turned a
specific moment into an artificial situational portrayal, with the decorative organization of the two-dimensional
surface becoming the actual content of his art. With his posters and colour lithographs, Toulouse-Lautrec
revolutionized the aesthetics of prints and carried the medium to its highest artistic level.
Hall 13 – Text 1
“We had a new conception of light consisting of this: the negation of shadows. Light here is very strong,
shadows very luminous. Every shadow is a whole world of clarity and luminosity which contrasts with sunlight:
what is known as reflections.”
André Derain, 1905
In 1905 a group of young painters, including Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, and George
Braque, experienced a similar fate to that of the Impressionists thirty years earlier. Because of their uninhibited,
spontaneous, colourful, and seemingly arbitrary manner of painting, these artists were heavily criticized on the
occasion of their first exhibition at the Paris Salon d’Automne and dubbed “Fauves” (“wild beasts”). Although
the Impressionists had already recognized that shadows were coloured, they had continued to unify zones of
light and shade in their pictures through tonal gradations.
The Fauves explicitly disapproved of this harmonization. And having briefly felt at home artistically with the
Pointillists, they soon discarded their uniform, mosaic-like, and fragmented manner of painting as well. Instead,
they defined their motifs with broad brushstrokes and strong, contrasting colours deliberately chosen to
contradict nature. Shadows were rendered in the form of light-suffused coloured areas. The distinction between
zones of light and shade was achieved through the maximum contrast of pure colours.
In all this, the Fauves relied on artistic principles established by the Impressionists and those that first overcame
it. The Fauves studied not only the Impressionists, but also works by Signac, as well as pictures by Cézanne and
Van Gogh on display in Ambroise Vollard’s gallery. They were equally impressed by Gauguin’s black-outlined
arabesques and by Japanese woodcuts, with their clear linearity and simple, tranquil colour fields. They drew
upon all of these inspirations and were to influence the various Expressionist movements in France, and
particularly in Germany and Austria, for two decades to come.
Hall 13 – Text 2
As a contemporary of the Impressionists and pathfinder for Cubism, Paul Cézanne raised the Impressionist
principle of documenting subjective experience to the level of objectivity. In so doing, the degree of completion
of a pictorial work became the focus of his art.
By translating subjective perception into the language of art, and by fragmenting reality into the smallest
possible particles in order to subsequently reassemble and unite them to form a harmonious composition,
Cézanne sought to grasp the fundamentals of reality, painting not only what was visible on the outside. His
method is the analysis of form and the latter’s dissolution into its rudimentary elements. The basic structure of
his pictures is composed of units of form and colour described by gestural brushstrokes (taches). What appears
to be only a fragment of reality and unfinished in terms of technique is declared a balanced pictorial entity in
terms of aesthetics. The unfinished work defines the perception of the manifest world as an open process that
can never be completed. After Cézanne, the objective legibility of an object was no longer the goal and purpose
of painting. In this way Cézanne, who had started out as a pre-Impressionist and shared the Impressionist
worldview during the 1870s, finally overcame the last art movement that sought to imitate reality instead of
inventing its own.
LIST OF LOANERS
Centraal Museum, Utrecht (Loan of the Stichting Van Baaren Museum)
Fondation Surpierre
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
University Library of the College of Higher Education Cologne
Jukka Kettunen
Merzbacher Art Foundation
Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Dépôt de la Fondation Gottfried Keller
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Národní Galerie, Prague
Austrian National Library, Vienna
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
Private Collection, Courtesy Peter Eltz
Private Collection, France
Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie Krugier& Cie, Geneva
Private Collection, USA
Propriété LEFRANC & BOURGEOIS - Le Mans
Collection Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Bern
Collection Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, Geneva
Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
Winsor & Newton Museum & Archive, London
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special exhibitions and the Habsburg Staterooms.
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