BIOGRAPHY: THE IMPRESSIONISTS: THE ROAD TO IMPRESSIONISM {PART 1 OF 2} (TV)
Summary
This program, the first half of a two-part documentary, examines the lives and works of the famed French Impressionist painters, with commentary from assorted art historians. The artists strove to capture "a fleeting moment in time" rather than a full, detailed image, discarding the so-called rules of the past and painting according to "their sensation." In the spring of 1859, nineteen-year-old Claude Monet arrived in Paris to attend the Salon, a huge annual show of "academic art," which mostly focused on religious and mythological imagery. Monet's father permitted him an allowance on the condition that he study art under a reputable master, but he instead joined a unstructured, informal "academy" and was financially cut off. Born in 1840 to merchants, Monet started out sketching caricatures of local townspeople and then met artist Eugène Boudin, who invited him to paint landscapes along with him. In Paris, Monet encountered the likeminded Camille Pissarro, who grew up in St. Thomas as "the ultimate outsider," shunned because his father had married his uncle's widow. His great-grandson Joaquim Pissarro explains that Camille fled to Paris and angered his parents anew when he began an affair with a young Catholic maid, but the couple stayed together for life and had eight children.
Pissarro and Monet bonded over their interest in painting "unworthy," unglamorous scenes of Parisian life, though Monet was soon conscripted into the army in Algeria and turned down his father's offer to buy him out of it. In 1861, Auguste Renoir entered École des Beaux-Arts and, despite his reserved manner, clashed with his teacher Charles Gleyre over his love of "devilish color." Renoir grew up in the slums of Paris and frequently visited the Louvre as a child, eventually securing a position as a porcelain painter. At school, he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Monet, who returned to Paris after a bout of typhoid fever. Joined by Pissarro and "led" by Monet, the group worked on landscapes and then encountered Édouard Manet, who gained notoriety for his painting "The Bath," scandalous for its matter-of-fact depiction of nudity. Manet also met Edgar Degas at Degas' "temple," the Louvre, where he frequently copied the masters as a means of practice. Degas, highly anxious and emotionally stunted from the early death of his mother, attempted to create a work for submission to the Salon, but failed to complete it in time and retreated to a solitary studio where he created multiple self-portraits and "history paintings." Around 1861 he began embracing a more modern style, creating unusual, "disruptive" images of horses at the race track.
At the same time, Manet's infamy increased with his bold work "Olympia," though he was annoyed when he was mistaken as the artist of Monet's seascapes. Monet retreated to the Fontainebleau Forest to work on "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe," for which Bazille eventually posted, along with the young model Camille Doncieux. He abandoned the work in 1866, however, and Manet borrowed the title to rechristen "The Bath." To meet the deadline for the Salon, Monet very quickly completed the life-size "The Woman in the Green Dress" with Doncieux as model, and the work was accepted into the show. He continued creating outdoor works featuring Doncieux, who eventually became his mistress, while elsewhere Renoir worked on his image of the goddess Diana, though it was rejected from the Salon. Doncieux fell pregnant and Monet, desperate for money, sold a painting to Bazille and returned to his parents' home without his mistress. Their son was born in 1867, but Bazille failed to respond to Monet's many letters begging for a monetary advance and Monet later attempted suicide by jumping into the Seine. He reconsidered, however, and was eventually able to move back to Paris with Doncieux and their son after selling some of his works.
Pissarro also struggled with finances, though Degas lived off a generous allowance from his father and remained entirely focused on his art. He experimented with different styles, but panicked when his eyesight began to fail and threw himself even further into his work, frequently creating works not considered "pretty." In 1868, the "difficult" Degas angered Manet by painting an apparently unflattering work of Manet's wife, though they soon resolved the dispute. Degas harbored feelings for fellow painter Berthe Morisot, though nothing more came of the relationship than his attendance at her well-connected family's weekly dinners. Berthe and her sister Edma's serious devotion to their childhood art lessons was considered a "catastrophe" by their mother, as female artists were viewed as undesirable wives and mothers. Both sisters were enchanted by Manet, who over time created fourteen different portraits of Berthe, though their mother chaperoned every encounter. Edma eventually married and Berthe suffered a "lamentation mania," wondering if she should abandon her artistic career. An 1869 trip to Edma's home in Brittany was a "new beginning," however, and Berthe was greatly encouraged when Manet expressed approval of her harbor painting, in which she experimented with different brush strokes and depictions of light.
Elsewhere, Monet and Renoir saved their money and set off for Le Grenouillére, the frog pond, where they experimented with short brush strokes in an attempt to capture the shimmering movement of the water. The works created there were "the debut of the impressionist style" and were soon imitated by their contemporaries, though Monet's daring 1870 submission to the Salon was rejected, while Renoir's "safer" work was accepted. Monet and Doncieux finally married, and he painted her multiple times on their "working honeymoon." Berthe, however, was distressed when Manet made significant changes to her Salon submission, a portrait of her mother and sister, worried that it was no longer truly "hers." War broke out in 1870 between France and Prussia and several of the artists signed up or were drafted, though Monet and Pissarro both fled to London. Twenty-nine-year-old Bazille was killed in battle in November, and the other artists mourned the "quiet but driving force" of their friend. France surrendered in January 1871 and civil war broke out by April, and Manet's sketches depict the extreme violence in Paris at the time. After the war, however, a "new France" emerged, and the artists were all the more determined to create works "on their own terms." Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: A&E
- DATE: June 3, 2001 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:29:36
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:73349
- GENRE: Biography
- SUBJECT HEADING: Biography; Education/Information; Art
- SERIES RUN: A&E - TV series, 1964-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- CarolAnne Dolan … Executive Producer
- Susan E. Leventhal … Executive Producer
- Norman Cohen … Coordinating Producer
- Alison Guss … Supervising Producer
- Maryellen Cox … Supervising Producer
- Bruce Alfred … Producer, Director, Writer
- Michael Kantor … Consulting Producer
- Edward Herrmann … Narrator
- Victor Garber … Cast, Voice
- Josef Sommer … Cast, Voice
- Amy Irving … Cast, Voice
- Paul Hecht … Cast, Voice
- Philip Bosco … Cast, Voice
- Jeffrey DeMunn … Cast, Voice
- Kaili Vernoff … Cast, Voice
- George Demas … Cast, Voice
- Ross Wassermann … Cast, Voice
- Hugh Sinclair … Cast, Voice
- Kris Liem … Cast, Voice
- Lennon Parham … Cast, Voice
- Norman Cohen … Cast
- David Davron … Cast
- Geoff Farnsworth … Cast
- Olivier Gonties … Cast
- Geoffrey Notkin … Cast
- Vanessa Sanchez … Cast
- Greg Schmalbach … Cast
- Michaela Scioscia … Cast
- Danny Sepulveda … Cast
- Harry Shaw … Cast
- Catherine Stead … Cast
- Paul Hayes Tucker … Interviewee
- John House … Interviewee
- Joachim Pissarro … Interviewee
- Richard Brettell … Interviewee
- Colin Bailey … Interviewee
- Richard Kendall … Interviewee
- Linda Nochlin … Interviewee
- Tamar Garb … Interviewee
- Anne Higonnet … Interviewee
- Charles Moffett … Interviewee
- Frédéric Bazille
- Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
- Eugène Boudin
- Camille Doncieux
- Charles Gleyre
- Edgar Degas
- Édouard Manet
- Claude Monet
- Berthe Morisot
- Edma Morisot
- Camille Pissarro
- Auguste Renoir
- Alfred Sisley