Why Impressionist artists were rebels?

Rebels of a new generation

“Would someone kindly explain to M. Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with green and purplish blotches that indicate a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse…” That was a review by Albert Wolff in Le Figaro on Renoir’s Nude in the Sunlight, 1876 (view below). In another critique of the same Impressionist painting, Louis Enault writes,”[i]t is depressing to look at this large study of a nude woman; her purplish flesh is the color of game that has been hung for too long, and someone really should have made her put on a dress.”

Nude in the Sunlight by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket by James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Impressionist artists turned their backs on the Romantic fixation with emotions. To them, stirring a visual reaction in the eyes of viewers was paramount to stirring their emotions. Also, they shunned clear outlines and forms of Neoclassical paintings. The Impressionist emphasis was on colour, rather than emotions or form. At the time when Impressionism was conceived, artists were expected to conceal their brushwork. Conventionally, paintings – the kind that aspires to belong to high art – tended to look like they were not “painted.” Thick blobs of paint, found in Impressionist works, were considered crude. It was the antithesis of art to leave visible traces of the brushwork on the canvas.

Hostility towards Impressionism culminated in one of the most famous court cases of the 19th century. At the center of the trial was a painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875), by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (view above). The modern motto of “art for art’s sake” was exemplified in Whistler’s painting. His painting did not just foretell of the coming abstraction in art, but also its name “nocturne” (a musical arrangement) was a clear and unprecedented emphasis on the artist’s own experience. On the other side of the court was the leading and respected critic of the Victorian age, John Ruskin, known for his conservative views on art. The libel trial was instigated by Ruskin’s review of Whistler’s painting: “[I] never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Ouch! Ruskin would have been outraged if he knew that one day that kind of paintings would be worth well over 100 million dollars.

Whistler won the case, but the court humiliated him by awarding him only one farthing in damages and he was forced to pay for the court fees. The pyrrhic victory brought him financial ruin. The court and the public, from the outset, were not in favor of him or his modern style.

It’s hard to imagine the Impressionist style, admired around the world today, being mocked by critics and the public as ugly and sketchy. The familiarity of the masterpieces makes it even harder for us to comprehend the rationale behind the negative public outcry of its own era.

Impressionist artworks were rejected several times by the Paris Salon of the French Academy –notorious for its conservative taste. Hence, Monet and fellow Impressionists had to show their paintings in independent exhibitions which lasted from 1874 to 1886. Their few exhibitions (only eight of them) were earth-shattering to the world of art. The aftershocks would eventually take the form of other ‘modern’ art movements such as Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism and abstract art.