Impressionism Without London? --- Days 14/119-121

Walks: Hood, Presidio, Sausalito

Distances: average 4 miles

So, Ciwt wonders what would have become of Impressionism if Monet had not moved with his wife, Camille, and young son to London to avoid conscription during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).  

Monet spoke next to no English, money was extremely tight and the young couple felt isolated and unhappy in the large, foggy city. He produced virtually no art during their stay but recorded his boredom and general unhappiness about his London life in this portrait of Camille in their small Chelsea lodging room.

Meditation, Madame Monet on a Sofa, 1870-71, o/c

This was Claude Monet, the Father of Impressionism's painting style at the time.  He had begun his experimental pursuit of recording the true light and colors of nature, but was still an exceptional! (Ciwt Loves his early, pre-Impressionist work!) realist painter.

Mercifully the war was short-lived, but one of the first paintings he exhibited upon his return to Paris is already in a radically different style:

The Zaan at Zaandam, 1870-1, o/c

Here begins Impressionism!  (The first official, 'notorious' Impressionist Exhibit would happen in 1874)

What had happened to so throughly affect Monet's painting style and the work he exhibited to the public?

Ciwt guesses three things in particular.  The first in answer to Monet's style: JMW Turner.  The second in answer to the art he exhibited: Camile Pissarro, Charles-Francois Daubigny who later were part of the core group of Impressionists.  And, most especially, Paul Durand-Ruel. 

More about Durand-Ruel in another CIWT because, to Ciwt's eye, he would not have mattered had it not been for the English expressive colorist, landscapist, turbulent marine painter, revolutionary painting genius, JMW Turner (1775-1851).  

Unmotivated to paint as Monet may have been during his self-exile in London, he did spend much of his time there studying Turner's paintings.  Surely Monet must have seen an artist as obsessed with weather and capturing all its atmospheric conditions as he was.  And he must have learned from, internalized, adopted and then made his own Turner's vibrant colors and semi-abstract, form-dissolving techniques.  Whatever Monet's genius to genius relationship to Turner was is impossible to know, but surely, in London,  Monet first encountered, communed with and was irrevokably changed as an artist by Turner.  

JMW Turner, Rain, Steam amd Speed - The Great Western Railway, 1844, o/c



Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, o/c