54 Artists Magazine October 2019
THE NEW GUARD
Monet was immediately thrown into
the art politics of the time. To make a
career as an artist, it was necessary to
gain admittance to the annual official
Salon, a state-sponsored exhibition
juried by distinguished artists. The
forces who ran the Salon were largely
conservative painters committed to
an academic and classical tradition.
Set against this old guard was the
crowd of younger painters, who were
interested in painting modern life and
presenting the world as they found it
instead of seeing it through the haze
of centuries of Western painting.
Their heroes were Gustave Courbet
(French, 1819–1877), whose powerful
realism had already begun to make
a dent, and Édouard Manet (French,
1832–1883). The latter’s Le Déjeuner
sur l’Herbe, a dramatic unmasking of
the sexual mores of the middle class,
had already caused a scandal.
Monet’s initial impulse was to try
to exhibit at the Salon, and although
he did get accepted in 1865 and 1866,he met with only modest success.
Further rejections followed, and by the
early 1870s, he and his friends decided
to exhibit independently. Monet, along
with Renoir, had by now made huge
strides as painters. They had begun to
add heightened color to the sketchy,
direct style they favored. They had
also discovered that by maintaining
the relationship of the colors across
the painting in the same order that
they appeared in nature, they could
create an impression of light.
Further, the artists discerned that
keeping the color broken into small
strokes of paint allowed them to build
subtle color effects from combina-
tions of more saturated hues that
would combine optically on the sur-
face. The resulting active colors
created an illusion of light that was
far more convincing and vibrant than
that of traditional tonal techniques.INTO THE LIGHT
The dramatic nature of this achieve-
ment can be seen in the Denverexhibition, in which a “before” and
“after” comparison is possible. The
1858 View From Rouelles (above), which
Monet painted when he was just 18,
depicts an outdoor scene featuring
a traditional composition, in which
overlapping elements move gently
away into space. Laid over a warm
brown underpainting, the painting
works almost entirely tonally, with
shadows falling to rather leaden grays.
The effect is somewhat heavy and,
despite the lively painting of the foliage
in the foreground, feels overworked.
Compare this to The Artist’s House
at Argenteuil (opposite), which Monet
painted some 15 years later, in 1873.
We find ourselves plunged into a world
filled with sunshine and air. Gone are
the dull shadows, the predictable com-
position and the heavily overworked
foliage. The scene appears lighter than
a breeze and the brushwork delicate
and alive, with the fresh paint placed
in short strokes and dabs.
A brief examination reveals that
the effect of light is managed largely