The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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of light. His freedom from preconceived ideas of nature
prompted his contemporary Paul Cézanne to exclaim that
he was “only an eye,” but, he added admiringly, “what an
eye!” Ironically, Monet’s devotion to the physical truth of
nature paved the way for modern abstraction—the concern
with the intrinsic qualities of the subject, rather than with
its literal appearance.

Renoir

Impressionism was never a single, uniform style.
Nevertheless, it characterized the art of the group of
Parisian artists who met regularly at the Café Guerbois and
who showed their works together at no less than eight pub-
lic exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. To a greater
or lesser extent, their paintings reflected Monet’s manner
of rendering nature in short strokes of brilliant color.
Above all, they brought painterly spontaneity to a celebra-
tion of the leisure activities and diversions of urban life:
dining, dancing, theater going, boating, and socializing.
In this sense, the most typical Impressionist painter
might be Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Le Moulin
de la Galette, a popular outdoor café and dance hall locat-
ed in Montmartre (the bohemian section of nineteenth-
century Paris), provided the setting for one of Renoir’s most
seductive tributes to youth and informal pleasure (Figure

31.6). In the painting, elegantly dressed young men and

women—artists, students, and working-class members of

Parisian society—dance,drink, and flirt with one another

in the flickering golden light of the late afternoon sun.

Pissarro

Renoir’s colleague, Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), was

born in the West Indies but settled in Paris in 1855. The

oldest and one of the most prolific of the Impressionists, he

exhibited in all eight of the Impressionist group shows.

Like Monet and Renoir, Pissarro loved outdoor subjects:

peasants working in the fields, the magical effects of fresh-

ly fallen snow, and sunlit rural landscapes. Late in his

career, however, as his eyesight began to fail, he gave up

painting out-of-doors. Renting hotel rooms that looked out

upon the streets of Paris, he produced engaging cityscapes

(see Figure 31.1)—sixteen of Paris boulevards in 1897

alone.

Strikingly similar to popular panoramic photographs of

turn-of-the-century Paris, Pissarro’s luminous scenes cap-

ture the rhythms of urban life; throngs of horse-drawn car-

riages and pedestrians are bathed in the misty atmosphere

that envelops Paris after the rain. Asked by a young artist

for advice on “how to paint,” Pissarro responded that one

should recordvisual perceptions with immediacy, avoid

Figure 31.6 PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 3^1 ⁄ 2 in.  5 ft. 9 in. Montmartre,
the semirural working-class district of Paris, was not incorporated into the city limits until 1860. The Moulin (“mill”) marked
the spot of one of Montmartre’s famous old windmills. Galettes, that is, buckwheat pancakes, were a specialty of the house.