Let's Celebrate Spring and Rebirth with the Impressionists

Claude Monet, Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre in the Garden, 1866
(Hermitage Museum, St. Peterburg)

After months of freezing cold and rain of biblical proportions, spring seems to have arrived. Looking out the window and seeing bright sunshine, being able to finally put away my dark, heavy coat and seeing flowers bloom everywhere gives me the little kid going out to play kind of happiness. I can hardly sit still. There is a bigger, a deeper reason for recognizing the beauty of the weather, the flowers, and the birds and the bees. We are living through such dark and unhappy times that we need to get any kind of joy wherever we can get it. I am sick of being the victim of political opportunism at every turn, war, death and a world that lacks concern for the whole of humanity. So, enough of all of that. Let’s enjoy this very moment when the sun is shining bright and the birds are singing so loud you would think there was a competition to who can announce, “Spring is here!” the best and the loudest. Spring is the time of rebirth and on a day when the Christians are celebrating the resurrection, and a major referendum can determine the future of secular, democratic Turkish Republic, I just want to be able to hope for a better tomorrow.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Promenade, 1876
(The Getty Museum)

I am no singer or artist but merely an observer of life. On my more fanciful days, I like to think of myself as a flâneuse… one who strolls the city to observe. Not getting involved but merely seeing and taking note of all the happenings in the urban environment of modernity. Spring always puts me in the mind of the Impressionists. It may be due to the weather allowing me the opportunity to stroll along city streets and observe the interactions of humanity with their urban environment, or it may simply be the colors and the light that was the trademark of the impressionists. No matter what it is, I am in the mind of a flâneur and want to stroll the internet to visualize the season in terms of Impressionist paintings.

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre Spring, 1897
(Private Collection) 

The Impressionist paintings were a visual manifestation of modern life. They captured instantaneous moments of modernity with staccoto brushstrokes and a variety of subjects that captured the effects of industrialization in France and especially Paris. The invention of portable tubes for oil paints, allowed them to paint en plen air, and produce paintings that told the story of and would appeal to the emerging bourgeoisie class. The Industrial revolution beget factories that created a new working class and advances in technology such as trains, which effected the way people could travel. The concept of leisure time as well as how and where one spent that time emerged along with the visibility of the working classes in some type of leisurely pursuit. These elements of modernity contributed to the subjects of Impressionist paintings.

Claude Monet, Women in the Garden, 1866
(Musee d'Orsay)

Impressionists painted nature and light, how light touched upon different surfaces and changed,  producing a variety of colors, as the sun made its progression from morning to night. Fashionably dressed men and women displayed in gardens, fields and conservatories became another one of their favorite subjects. La mode (fashion) as a harbinger of modernity due to the birth of department stores and ready-made fashions as well as the elegant Parissiene could be seen as the main protagonists of paintings by Monet, Renoir and Manet.  

Édouard Manet, Jeanne (Spring), 1881
(The Getty Museum)

I must add the two female Impressionists, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morissot, who produced a large body of work that also included parent and child themes. Mary Cassatt posed her family members, and children in their natural habitat doing their daily pursuits. There are mother and child paintings with women sewing, reading or bathing their children, and even titled, Woman and Child in the  Driving Seat. It is interesting to note the perspective of a woman on a woman's pursuits and spaces as opposed to the more romanticized, sexualized or oppressed male versions. 

Mary Cassatt, Auguste Reading to her Daughter, 1910
(Private Collection)

Berthe Morisot has a special place in my heart for reversing the traditional mother-child genre by painting her daughter with her husband Eugene Manet. These women were part of the Impressionists due to their use of color and paint techniques but their point of view in regards to the people and places of modernity differed revealing a more insightful picture. 

Berthe Morisot, Eugene and his Daughter in the Garden, 1883
(Private Collection)

These were not the only subject matters that the Impressionists limited themselves to but they are the first ones that come to my mind on this beautiful spring morning. As I listen to the birds sing and look out at the budding tree full of green leaves of promise outside my window, I visualize the world in terms of Impressionist paintings and for just this moment forget the darkness and the chaos that is consuming our world.

I will borrow from the 17^th century English poet, Robert Herrick and for today, will interpet them to suit my purpose and say…

Gather your rose buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.

Enjoy life, enjoy spring, enjoy the sunshine while you have it.  

Impressionist's Response to Seurat's Pointillism

Georges Seurat began his career as an impressionist concerned with the effects of light but later went on to reform it and approach Impressionism in a whole new perspective, as a result of which being referred to as a Neo-Impressionist.  He incorporated scientific theories into his art and surpassed the momentariness of his contemporaries and built canvases that would recall the treasures of the past from the art of the  Egyptians to the friezes of the Parthenon.  Some people loved his work while a lot of the Impressionists despised it.  His stilted, frozen figures were severely criticized by Monet who went on to paint a series of paintings as a response to Seurat to get beyond Impressionism.

Camille Pissaro, Apple Picking, 1886
(Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan)

Pissaro, on the other hand embraced Seurat's Pointillism and announced that Impressionism had become rancid, too romantic, stale, old and dried up.  He incorporated Seurat's technique into classical Pissaro subject matter in Apple Picking from 1886.

Camille Pissaro, The Boulevard Montmarte on  a Winter Morning, 1897
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

But by 1897, after working in this manner for a couple of years, he was back to the Impressionistic style because he realized Seurat's style was too static.  Pissaro thought that it was not possible to capture the momentariness, the colors or the effects of Impressionism with Pointillism.

Monet and Renoir were especially upset with Seurat's work.  Claude Monet who had not done much of figure painting since his earlier days, suddenly did monumental figures in landscapes.  He found Seurat's figures too static so he painted figures full of dynamism with everything in motion as a response to A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  He achieved this by color, using oranges, yellows and blues, plus with his vigorous brush work.  The clouds are moving, the grass is swaying, the figure's dress and scarf is fluttering in the wind.

Claude Monet, Study of a Figure Outside:  Woman with a Parasol Turned to the Left and Turned to the Right, 1886

                 These paintings are Monet's critique of Seurat's figures in A Sunday at Le Grand Jatte.

Around this time Monet had decided to broaden his and Impressionism's horizons outside of just Paris and its environs.  He traveled out to different regions of France and painted numerous canvases on subjects of his interest - weather and light effects, clouds, crashing waves - the drama of nature. As he traveled throughout the country to Etrerat, Grand-Camp, Belle Ille, and Antibes, and documented the French countryside, Monet's desire to proclaim his and Impressionism's association with the French nation as a whole, came into realization.

During his travels Monet revisited destinations that were main tourist attractions and also were painted by Georges Seurat in his pointillist technique, and reworked these subjects in pure Impressionist style.

Claude Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882

(Art Institute of Chicago)

Georges Seurat, La Bec du Hoc, Grancamp, 1885

(Tate Gallery, London)

While in Monet's Cliff Walk at Pourville, even the grass is moving and there is no clear edge, in Seurat's Le Bec du Hoc, the edges are clearly defined and the birds in the air, the only living thing on the canvas look still.

Claude Monet, Rocks at Belle Isle, 1886
(Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

When Monet was painting these rocks in a spot that is a little bit father down the coast from where Seurat made his painting in Grancamp,  Monet must have been thinking of him.  The deep blue and violet tones of the water shows the dynamism of the sea and how dangerous the coast is. Monet uses the same tones he uses in the water, in the rock formations along with yellow and orange to emphasize the light effects. Interestingly enough, Seurat also uses yellow and oranges for his light effects but without any of Monet's dynamism.


Monet talked about the difficulties he was having during his stay in Belle Isle, in his letters to Alice Hoschede and his friends.   The canvases he produced in Belle Isle had no trace of humanity, only earth, sky and sea.  He wrote about the crashing waves and the mist and how difficult it was to paint in these conditions, creating the myth of Monet as the artist who was deeply and personally involved with nature.  Although, Monet actually would finish his paintings in his studio.  By concentrating on the weather and light conditions, in specific sites, Monet proved the lengths he could go to in Impressionism and the exacting depiction of natural phenomenon.
His Belle Ille paintings were the first of his series paintings where he used a standard format for all the canvases and concentrated on a limited motif, and exhibited several together as a group.  These were the predecessor of his famous Grain Stacks series.