Montmarte, Monet

In the autumn of 1871, Monet returned to Paris after his short exile abroad. Here, he found his country changed. The city had suffered a gruelling siege at the end of the war. Then, dismayed at the inaction and incompetence of the French authorities, its people had risen in revolution, establishing the Paris Commune. After suppressing the communards, the new, arch-conservative Third Republic was highly suspicious of anything radical, an attitude they extended to art. 

Monet’s work was rejected from the Salon. In 1874, he, along with 30 other ‘radical’ artists, including Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot, came together and put on their own exhibition. Monet contributed the painting that illustrates this postcard, as well as 12 others, including Boulevard des Capucins (below).

In this busy, winter canvas, Monet shows us the hustle and bustle of modern Paris. The boulevard was built during Baron Haussmann’s public works campaign, which transformed Paris, widening its streets and creating the vast boulevards for which the city is now famous. Haussmann aimed to create a modern city, based on rational design and informed by the idea of positivism, which tells us that knowledge comes only from observing the world, rather than from speculation or received wisdom.

Monet’s way of painting echoes this philosophy. Painting outside, he captured the fleeting moment as faithfully as he could through direct observation. By focusing on modern life and landscapes rather than the biblical, historical or allegorical subjects favoured by academic artists, he moved away from embellishment, idealisation, moral lessons and symbolism. This preference for a perception-based rather than meaning-based approach to painting was shared by the other painters in Monet’s circle. This made them unpopular with an art establishment that believed painting should educate, imparting moral lessons through symbolism and allegory.

As far as the art establishment was concerned, the exhibition was a disaster. Critics complained about the sketch-like nature of the work, the ‘black tongue-lickings’ that represented people in some of the canvases, the strange colour choices, the visible brushstrokes, and the total lack of allegory or moral instruction. In a famous satirical article written just after the exhibition, the critic Louis Leroy referred to the centrepiece of Monet’s contribution, An Impression: Sunrise, as “an impression; even the wallpaper is more finished than the paintings.”

The name stuck, and Monet and his friends began to wear it as a badge of honour. The Impressionists were born. 

Not every critic was hostile. There was an appetite for groundbreaking art at the time, and a sense that the Salon under the 3rd Republic had become a little stale. One critic, Jules Castagnary, agreed with Leroy that the work on display was sketch-like, but denied that this was a negative, hitting the nail on the head with a perfect and prescient description of the group’s appeal:

“They are impressionists in the sense that they render not the landscape, but the sensation produced by it. The same word has entered their language: it is not a landscape, it is an impression, as the catalogue calls Monet’s sunrise. In this manner, they leave reality and enter into pure idealism.

Despite the critical savaging, the exhibition seemed to have bound the Impressionists even closer together. None were swayed from their convictions and plans were drawn up to put on another exhibition. The group became stronger, convinced, despite their detractors, of the value of their work.