Why Do We Love Impressionism?

Impressionism is now so well known and loved that the word has become almost a synonym for painting, as if it alone summed up the entire art. But what do we really know about the working methods of the Impressionists and their artistic formation? And which artists are truly Impressionists? What do Renoir and Degas have in common, or Berthe Morisot and Fantin-Latour?

Outside the artists' bonds of friendship and support, was there truly a school of Impressionism? The very word almost immediately suggests the art of under- standing Nature. Our minds associate Water Lilies with the gardens at Giverny as if the painter and gardener Monet designed his gardens like a picture and his pictures like a garden. There is a little truth in this, but whoever knows the art of gardening and that of painting realizes that the two domains meet only in appearance. We are so used to equating Impressionism with landscape that the notion of Impressionist portraiture surprises us as much as a religious painting by Jackson Pollock would! Isn't portraiture the most conventional genre of painting? Isn't it limited by the necessity of resemblance? Moreover, wasn't it exhausted since the Renaissance, when all over Europe artists experimented with every possible form-bust, full-length, portraits in an interior or landscape, portraits of the rich and powerful, of modest people, of fellow artists, of kings, or self-portraits? Finally, didn't the rapid development of photography after 1840 make the painted portrait obsolete, by achieving the absolute objectivity artists had dreamed of for so long?

Faces of Impressionism poses all these questions. The magnificent grouping of masterpieces that will arrive at the museum this month shows how these artists responded to the needs of their time in unique ways. These varied portraits present a new vision of Impressionism, and nothing illustrates better the contrasting sensibilities and development of these artists than their diverse investigations of the human face. As chronologically presented in the exhibition, their adventure begins in 1850 when Manet entered the studio of Thomas Couture, professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Goya and Velazquez were the fashion in Parisian studios, and the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris included an important section largely devoted to foreign artists. Many young painters rushed toward these new paths, Courbet and Corot showing the way and Monet and Pissarro later discovering the art of Turner in London. Ultimately the first significant exhibition took place during six weeks in April and May 1874, in the studio of the photographer Nadar, uniting Cézanne, Monet, Degas, Sisley, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and others. Monet showed his 1872 picture of the port of Le Havre, Impressions, soleil levant (Impressions: Rising Sun), and derisive critics seized upon the term, thereby baptizing the "Impressionists."

Today we love Impressionism as we love liberty, audacity, and truth against academic conventions. Faces of Impressionism invites us to reflect upon what pleases us and why.

Sylvain Bellenger, Curator of 19th-Century European Paintings