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Impressionism Emerged in Normandy

by Jacques-Sylvain Klein

General Commissioner of the Impressionist Normandy Festival
Author of La Normandie, berceau de l’Impressionnisme (Ouest France)

Sommaire
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872, musée Marmottan-Monet. Credit: Musee Marmottan, Paris, France/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: French / out of copyright Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872, musée Marmottan-Monet.

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Impression, soleil levant
1872, huile sur toile
Paris, Musée Marmottan / Bridgeman Giraudon

Everyone knows that Impressionism owes its name to the picture by Monet, Impression: Sunrise, painted in Le Havre in 1872. This canvas marvellously reflects a way of painting which sought to capture ephemeral moments. It preferred colour to form and let the viewer’s eye reconstitute what the painter’s fragmented brushstrokes had disassociated. In choosing this picture as the target of his mockery, and in characterizing the painters who adopted this manner of painting as “Impressionists,” the satirical critic, Louis Leroy, had no idea of how perspicacious he really was. In so doing, he simultaneously revealed the birth of a pictorial trend which sought light, the outdoors, and fleeting impressions, and he also testified to the geographical origins of this movement.

Impressionism seemed to have burst on to the scene in Paris in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, the exhibition which brought together the painters refused for the official Salon exhibition. In reality, this pictorial revolution, one of the most important in art history, emerged slowly, by successive transformations of a new pictorial genre, that of outdoor landscape painting which was already taking form in Normandy in the 1820’s.

Impressionism, which is the expression itself of clear light painting, did not, as is often said, come out of the sombre Barbizon Forest where the naturalist painters were to be found. What a paradox that would be! This painting of fugitive moments was born under the capricious Norman skies, along its luminous river banks, and its verdant valleys.

An accumulation of coincidences ?

The birth of Impressionism on Norman lands might, at first, seem to be the culmination of coincidences. Let us cite, among these “happy accidents”, and in order of appearance, the following :

  • Géricault, the herald of Romanticism. He was born in Rouen in 1798, and that is where he would discover horse anatomy, a subject which would occupy an important place in his oeuvre.
  
  • Corot, the leader of the School of Nature. He studied in Rouen and discovered the light effects of Normandy long before those of Italy.
  
  • Delacroix, from his childhood on, spent holidayss at the château de Valmont (Valmont Castle), near Fécamp with his cousin, Riesener, He painted the cliffs of Etretat thirty years before Courbet and Monet, and he is the first, in The Sea seen from the Heights of Dieppe, to experiment with the “comma” brushstroke and juxtaposed colours which would characterise the Impressionist method.

    • Léon Riesener, Le petit pâtre, 1838, Musée d’Arts et d’Histoire de Lisieux, ©Studio Vallini
  • Huet, who was a close friend of Delacroix, considered himself a “son of Rouen.” He brought Romantic painting to the threshold of Impressionism.

    • Paul Huet (1803 – 1869), Vue de Rouen, 1831, 195 cm x 225 cm Huile sur toile Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen Cliché: Catherine Lancien, Carole Loisel
  • Millet, a native of Gruchy, a coastal hamlet in northern Cotentin, married a woman from Cherbourg and made a good living from painting portraits of the local bourgeoisie, until a love affair forced him to flee to Le Havre where he met Boudin.

    • Jean-François Millet, L'église de Gréville, entre 1871 et 1874, Musée d'Orsay
  • Courbet came to the Norman coast to paint starting in the 1840’s. He fell in love with a woman from Dieppe, and returned there often on account of their long affair.

    • Gustave Courbet, La falaise d'Etretat après l'orage, 1870, Paris, Musée d'Orsay© Musée d'Orsay, Hervé Lewandowski (MNR 561)
  • Daubigny succumbed to the charms of a Cauchoise, and settled in Villerville, a “mussel hole” near Honfleur.

    • Charles-François Daubigny, Château-Gaillard, les Andelys, 1877 Musée d'Orsay, Paris, ©photo Musée d'Orsay / RMN (RF 3782)don de Mme David-Nillet
  • Boudin had a frame shop in Le Havre. He exhibited paintings by Jongkind, Millet, and the celebrities of the period – Isabey, Troyon, Couture – who initiated him into painting. Returning to his native Honfleur, he had Baudelaire as a neighbour, a poet and brilliant art critic who waxed enthusiastically over his “Ciels” executed in pastel.

Eugène Boudin, La plage de Trouville, 1865, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France ©photo musée d'Orsay / RMN (RF 3663) legs Eugène Béjot

Eugène Isabey, Falaise en Normandie, Dieppe, Château Musée de Dieppe © château-musée de Dieppe/ Bertrand Legros

Constant Troyon, Le pâturage à la gardeuse d'oies, 1854, Paris, Musée d'Orsay Legs d'Alfred Chauchard, © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski (RF 1895) legs Alfred Chauchard
  • Monet lived in Le Havre from the age of five. He made the acquaintance of Boudin and then Jongkind, both of whom took him to paint on site directly from the landscape. They would be, in his opinion, his only true teachers.
  
  • Degas discovered the Haras du Pin (the stud farm at Pin) at a young age, and he painted his first horse races at the Argentan race tracks in Orne.

    • Edgar Degas, Course de gentlemen. Avant le départ, 1862 Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
  • Renoir, welcomed to the Wargemont Castle by the Bérards, joined his friends in Dieppe: Jacques-Emile Blanche, Monet, Eva Gonzales, and Pissarro, as well as Durand-Ruel, who acted as dealer for all of them.
  
  • Berthe Morisot spent her holidayss at Houlgate where she received the good advice of Riesener and Degas.

    • Berthe Morisot, Sur la falaise, 1874, Musée du Louvre
  • Lepine painted his first canvasses in Caen, his native city.

    • Stanislas Lépine, Le port de Caen, vers 1859, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, France
  • Seurat spent his holidays at Grandcamp and Port-en-Bessin, and he pulled Signac and his Rouennais friend Angrand onto the path of Pointillism.

    • Georges Seurat, Port-en-Bessin, avant-port, marée haute, 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France ©photo musée d'Orsay / RMN (RF 1952-1) acquis sur les arrérages d'une donation anonyme canadienne
  • Anquetin, native of Etrépagny in Eure, invented Cloissonism and exercised an influence, hitherto unknown, on Van Gogh and Gauguin.
  
  • Dufy, Friesz, and Braque learned painting together at the Fine Arts School in Le Havre.
  

Such an accumulation of coincidences can obviously only be explained by deeper causes. Why did this tide unfurl over Normandy in succeeding waves over the course of a century? Why did the flame pass from hand to hand, from town to town, from beach to beach, from Romantics to the School of Nature, from the Realists to the Pre-Impressionists, from the Impressionist to the Post-Impressionists?

La Normandie, un terreau idéal...

If Normandy remained the preferred stomping ground for so long for all the innovators, of all the precursors in art, and often those in political ideas as well, then there are solid reasons.

Normandy possessed a long pictorial tradition, illustrated from the seventeenth century by a painter as famous as Poussin, native of Les Andelys, and by two dynasties of master painters: the Jouvenets, who headed a studio in Rouen, and the Restouts, who presided in Caen. At the eve of the Revolution, the drawing school in Rouen counted 300 students, including the landscape painters Houel and Eschard, as well as the engraver Le Mire, illustrator of La Fontaine’s Fables.

    Nicolas Poussin, L'orage, 1651 Crédit photo : Catherine Lancien, Carole Loisel et Morgan Cavecin

Normandy’s architectural wealth caused her to take the lead in the movement to rehabilitate the Medieval cultural heritage in the early 19th century. The greatest artists (Géricault, Isabey, Bonington, Hubert Robert) were employed by the erudite Baron Taylor to make lithographs of the region’s architectural treasures for the first volume of Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, which he published in 1820. Defending the cultural heritage soon became a speciality of the province, which created the first antiquarian society and invented the terms “Romanesque” and “Flamboyant Gothic.”

During the same period, Normandy benefited from the emergence of a new pictorial genre of outdoor landscape advanced by English artists such as Constable and Turner. Little by little, it would take over as the major genre. Thanks to its 600 kilometres of rocky and sandy coastline, its alternating plains and valleys, its maritime and river shores, its Medieval cities, and its evocative countryside, Normandy offered landscape and seaside painters an infinite variety of subjects to paint. To these can be added two elements essential to painters who were under the spell of light and fleeting impressions: 1) the omnipresence of water – whether falling in showers, unfolding in waves, or flowing in the Seine Valley, and 2) the constantly shifting skies which were ever changing under the effects of winds and tides.

The painters’ taste for landscape was also intimately linked to the fashion for sea bathing which was first launched by the aristocracy under the Restoration and continued under the July Monarchy. Dieppe, Etretat, and Trouville, followed by Deauville, Sainte-Adresse, and Cabourg, became famous due to the success of balneotherapy. The presence of an “elegant society” on the Norman coast provided patrons for painters such as Courbet or Boudin who knew how to create flattering mirrors for their clients.

Normandy’s proximity to Paris was an additional attraction for painters. In an age when travel was still by stagecoach or by steamboat, this was a determining factor, as much for “outsiders” who came to Normandy in the summer to paint outdoors, as it was for the Normans who went to the capital in the winter in order to frequent studios and exhibit in the Salon. This advantage would be accentuated in mid-century with the opening of train lines linking Paris to Rouen, Dieppe, Le Havre, and Deauville. At this time, the painters also became more mobile thanks to the invention of tube paints and of folding easels which lightened their equipment.

...favorisé par l’Entente franco-anglaise

To all of these reasons which explain why Impressionism had its source in Normandy, one has to add another which is of particular significance: the Anglo-French reconciliation. After the Napoleonic Wars and the continental blockade which had separated France and England, and in a prelude to the Entente Cordial concluded between Louis-Philippe and Queen Victoria, Normandy became the place for meetings and privileged exchanges between artistic avant-gardes of both countries.

    Walter Sickert, Dieppe, l'église st Jacques, portail sud, 1907,1908 © château-musée de Dieppe : Cliché Bertrand Legros

The brilliant painter Turner made six major trips to Normandy. He scoured the region from Tréport to Mont Saint Michel and from Le Havre to Vernon. He brought back ravishing watercolours which were used as a basis for his large oil compositions. He was imitated by such innovative painters as Bonington, Prout, and Cotman. Crossing the Channel in the opposite direction, Gericault spent a year in London where he triumphantly exhibited his Raft of the Medusa and discovered the work of Constable. He encouraged his friends Delacroix, Isabey, and Huet to travel to London, which soon became a preferable destination to Rome. Anglo-French exchanges would no longer be interrupted. Thus encounters on the Norman coast included Bonington and Delacroix, Whistler and Courbet, Sickert and Degas.

Claude Monet, La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le Portail et la tour d’Albane. Temps gris, 1894, Musées de Beaux-arts de Rouen (Catherine Lancien, Carole Loisel et Morgan Cavecin)

If, in 1892, Monet began his series of Rouen Cathedral in which the façade was parallel to the canvas surface and he used no perspective, it was without a doubt because he wished to surpass Turner who, sixty years earlier, had painted this Gothic Leviathan from an angle. Surpass the brilliant subject of Her Majesty – this was something that must have stimulated the passion of Giverny’s patriarch who imagined he was – not without reason! – the greatest painter of the century.

Text which will appear in the Guide du Routard Impressionist Normandy, to be published by Hachette in April 2010.