Impressionists Session 1

early in October of 1869 Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir readied themselves for a painting expedition both of the young artists were desperately short of cash it had taken them all summer long to scrape together enough money to buy their painting supplies [Music] now they were eager to experiment rather than transcribe the details of a scene they wanted to capture a fleeting moment in time the shimmer of water the reflection of light the movement of people [Music] as Monet and Renoir painted by the river Sen they were rejecting everything that was expected and traditional in art and together with a few like-minded artists they were about to launch what was not just a new style of painting but a revolution in the world of art a revolution that would become known as Impressionism [Music] Impressionism is now seen as a very comfortable art we love it we find it very serene and pleasing impression is art when it happened was the toughest most radical most challenging art of any period in history it was one of the big breaks in history of art there's a story in Impressionism of overturning the past and starting the history of art all over again but there's also a marvelous story of a group of individuals who were so different and so brave and so humorous and so willing to work with each other that they could make this incredible thing in the history of art happen [Music] Claude Monet uncompromising and demanding of himself and everyone around him he expected Fame and wealth from the beginning Auguste Renoir was nostalgic and respectful of artistic tradition a painter of modern life Renoir would eventually turn his back on all that was modern BIRT Morisot was brilliant at maintaining an image of absolute respectability at a time when it was not respectable for a woman to be a professional artist Camille Pissarro considered himself an anarchist but in practice he was kind and soft-spoken his friends thought of him as God the Father Edgard Agha was argumentative and obsessive a perfectionist until the day he died the guy could barely bring himself to call a work finished they shared one simple but entirely radical idea that it was time to discard the rules of the past and paint what they saw through their own eyes through what they called their sensation [Music] [Music] in the spring of 1859 a young aspiring painter took the long journey from the Normandy coast to Paris the young painter was 19-year old Claude Monet he was eager to get his first look at the salon the state-run art show the seller was a huge event hundreds of thousands came each year to see art jammed floor-to-ceiling in gallery after gallery in 1859 there was no such thing as Impressionism the art on display was academic art and the most respected works were full of mythological or religious themes and were known as history paintings Monet hoped to one day have his art exhibited at the salon for acceptance in the salon was the only way an artist could gain real recognition but Monet had no intention of making history paintings still he did want to stay in Paris and develop his craft as a painter his father agreed to help him with an allowance if he studied with an established master Monet took the allowance but ignored his father's wishes he joined the Academy Suisse which wasn't actually an academy but a space where artists could come to draw the nude without instruction when his father found out he was furious the long-standing tale is that his father cut him off he felt that if he wasn't gonna be part of a studio that this was not the way it's supposed to go about a career that he was gonna live eglee pigley in paris and that was his choice so he would have to make an annus own it was still normal for an artist to have to go through a process of drawing from casts and then drawing from the live model and learning from the art of classical antiquity what I already felt when he first went to Paris in 1859 that an artist should learn from what he saw around him and not learn from formal rules and at the same time he's clearly somebody who cultivation image as a teenage rebel he's always concerned with projecting an image of somebody who acquired notoriety not only through his art but actually through who he was I could never bend to any rule Monet once said even as a very small child [Music] Claude Monet was born November 14th 1840 the second son of Louise Justine and AD off Monet they were hard-working merchants in the port town of Lahav the young Monet had little interest in school and he spent as much time as he could on the cliffs and beaches around Lahav [Music] from early on he loved to draw by the time he was a teenager Monet was making caricatures of notable Lahav citizens he was quite good at it and before long the local station are displayed Monet's drawings in the shop window his work sold well at 20 francs apiece while at the stationers one day he met a local landscape artist Eugen boudin I hope you are not going to confine yourself to this sort of thing Buddha said and he invited Monet to paint with him in the open air along the Normandy coast Buddha helped spark Monet's passion for landscape painting a passion that would never leave him [Music] Monet described his work with boudin as if it were like the rending of a veil I understood he said what painting could be my destiny as a painter opened up before me Monet probably expected to be famous from very early on the first painting from his hand is a highly accomplished picture that was submitted to an exhibition in love in 1858 and it is spectacular it is also an example of an artist who was truly gifted so he knew he had it within himself to go down into history and he was determined to do it in the spring of 1859 Monet left Lahav carrying his art supplies and his life savings of 2,000 francs he was headed for the capital of our team in Paris [Music] at the Academy Suisse Claude Monet met another student who had no interest in academic training his name was Camille Pissarro a 29 year old from the West Indies island of st. Thomas [Music] like Monet Pissarro wanted to portray everyday life rather than the mythology of the past [Music] Pissarro had in fact painted scenes of everyday life from the time he was a boy in st. Thomas [Music] from the beginning he sketched these portraits of young slaves but with none of those kind of sentimental fatherly type of approach was directness and a simplicity that was very very unusual clearly he felt very much at home with people of a different context of a different social media from his Pissarro felt at home with people of a different social milieu because he did not feel at home within his own community [Music] Pizarro's father Frederick a Jewish immigrant from Bordeaux France had married a member of his own family his Aunt Rachel breaking Jewish law the Jewish community in st. Thomas would forever scorned the Pizarro's for this illegitimate Union [Music] Kamille pisar was the ultimate outsider st. Thomas is a small place and when your mom and dad aren't legitimately married and you know they can't they're not recognized in the synagogue and the other Jews don't like them and blah blah blah it's it's the kind of situation in which you have to learn to persist and to keep on going by the time he was a teenager Pissarro knew he wanted to be an artist but his father wanted him to help run the family store miss Aris father expected his son to pick up the business to become the dutiful son who would follow his parents footsteps not only did he not do that he ran away from home to become what an artist god forbid this is just something that was absolutely unacceptable when Pizarro ran away in 1852 he left behind his middle-class life determined to make his way as an artist he traveled through the West Indies and on to Venezuela [Music] and in 1855 he settled in Paris once there he managed to reconcile with his parents they had recently moved to Paris themselves and set up housekeeping with a generous staff of servants one of the servants was twenty-one year old Julie valet she posed for Pissarro in 1858 and the two secretly began an affair he happened to fall in love with a very simple simple woman who barely could read not even the cook of his parents but the cooks help when Pissarro broke the news to his parents it gave them the shock of their lives Julie was not only a lowly servant girl she was Catholic and she was pregnant well the piece ours mother just absolutely refused to have anything to do with Trudi the Pizarro's fired Julie and cut off their son's allowance Julie suffered a miscarriage but Pissarro refused to leave her they would go on to have eight children over the next 21 years and their relationship would last the rest of their lives [Music] Pizarro's mother never acknowledged Julie but before long she put aside just enough of her outrage to send her son a small monthly allowance camille pissarro escaped the family turmoil by concentrating ever harder on his landscape painting and figure drawing while sketching the nude at Academy Suisse late in 1859 Pissarro met Claude Monet Pissarro and Monet were soon off together on painting expeditions they portrayed scenes that had traditionally been considered unworthy of attention a telegraph tower an open field a dreary Factory they painted subjects that were not imbued with cultural meaning if I went out and painted the suburbs you'd think oh my god you know what is this is there any meaning in this and that was what the French thought by choosing their own countryside they did something radical they did some they made images out of an unholy or an unhistorical landscape there's no doubt that the notion that we in the 19th century that is were in a new age contributed to the desire for artists and for musicians alike to be able to look at their time and to find the values in that moment not to look to the pet ass or the mythology but to really look at the ways in which their own civilization was reshaping the concepts of the world [Music] Monet could not have been happier except for one thing between his painting trips the studio costs and his particular enjoyment of big-city nightlife Monet was living beyond his means his savings of two thousand francs was quickly depleted [Music] life could be relatively cheap if somebody had somewhere to live obviously subsistence is one thing Comfort is something else and money certainly ideally expected comfort he always loved fancy shirts with ruffles on it he liked to drink better wines so there were occasions when plenty of occasions when he was short of ready cash but Monet did not get much time to make his way in Paris in March of 1861 scripted into the peacetime army for seven years of service Monet's father offered to pay the government for a replacement for his son a common practice for those wealthy enough to afford it in return he wanted his son back home to help in the family store Claude Monet refused the offer and instead opted to join the cavalry in Algeria he felt that an adventure in Algeria was preferable to a mundane life as a shopkeeper [Music] but Monet paid a heavy price for his decision his career as an artist was now on indefinite hold [Music] early in 1861 Auguste Renoir and rolled in Lake old a bows are the School of Fine Arts the training ground for academic artists at the age of 20 Renoir had already had a successful career as a porcelain painter but at the ecole de bazaar he soon ran into trouble Renoir had entered a studio class run by Shara glare an academic artist who insisted on the primacy of drawing line and form Renoir liked to paint with brighter colours glare was concerned that devilish color as he called it might go to a student's head as polite and as respectful of authority as he was I think when he came to paint and draw even from very early time he did not accept any tutelage he was not prepared to have someone tell him that this was not the way to do it glare saw little promise in Renoir and Renoir as wealthier classmates saw him only as an outsider he starts off coming from a lowly background Renoir gets himself into a quite different world because he becomes a fine artist he moves from being an artisan or a decorator to painting fine art for art exhibitions he goes into this world that people associated with elevated status which is totally different from his humble background that he came from [Music] renoir had grown up the 6th child of seven in the slums that stood in the shadows of the louvre but instead of running with the boys in his neighborhood he roamed through the great museum absorbing the work of the Masters [Music] as a little boy Auguste decorated the walls of his home with drawings made from charcoal he'd taken from the stove when he turned 15 his parents apprenticed him to a porcelain painter his new boss was impressed and the young Renoir was soon earning the handsome salary of 20 francs a month Renoir carefully saved every son team he could to fund his art education and in 1861 he began his official studies in the studio of Sherrill glare I was always quiet in my corner very attentive very docile studying the model listening to the teacher and it was I who they called the revolutionary Auguste Renoir Renoir kept up his studies at glares for month after month doing his best to capture the line and form of the model [Music] [Music] renoir had been at glares for an entire year when three new students entered the studio and soon he was part of a circle of like-minded friends which included Frederick Fazio a 21 year old with plenty of money Alfred Sisley a Parisian born of English expatriates and a 22 year old fresh out of the army Claude Monet after a year of peacetime cavalry service Monet had come down with typhoid fever and was sent home to recover Adolphe Monet once again offered to buy out his son's army service and this time he would allow the young Monet to go back to Paris to paint but first he made his expectations clear get it into your head that you are going to work seriously this time I want to see you in a studio under the discipline of a reputable master if you decide to be independent again I shall cut off your allowance without a word Monet immediately set off for Paris and in the autumn of 1862 he entered the studio of Sherrill glare like Renoir before him Monet ran into trouble with glare not bad not bad at all that thing there but it is too much in the character of the model he has enormous feet you render them as they are all that is very ugly when one draws a figure one should always remember the art of classical antiquity Saul Claire I can only paint what I can see Monet replied he stayed with Claire to keep his father happy but he was an uninterested student [Music] Monet soon led his new friends Renoir sea sleigh and bozhil out of the studio to paint landscapes in the open air [Music] Camille Pissarro Monet's friend from the Academy Suisse joined in their expeditions [Music] Monet drove himself hard and he pushed his friends to do the same when he puts himself under a lot of pressure physically when he's working and I'm sure that when his friends were working with him that he would have expected them to do just the same and as he was in a sense the leader the most charismatic of them I'm sure they're too followed suit they would've done what he asked in order to show that they were worthy of tagging along with this great force of nature that he was presenting himself as Monet had established himself as the leader the driving force behind his small band of artist friends Monet Renoir C sleigh and Pesaro would be at the center of a new movement in art [Music] it would be a decade before this movement would be called Impressionism [Music] in Paris early in 1863 Claude Monet and Frederick bozhil went to see the work of Edouard Manet a 31 year old painter whose work the baths had suddenly captured all attention but the attention was all negative the public stared with open jaw the critics raged and even Emperor Napoleon the third weighed in deeming the work immodest with the bath which he later renamed déjeuner sur l'herbe Edouard Manet catapulted himself into the limelight and into position as the new leader of the avant-garde he had violated the academic rule that nudes were to look like goddesses mayonnaise nude appeared to be a modern Parisian woman I think that after the dejeuner cielab mani is always visible people remembered that picture and certainly for younger artists who were looking at modern life subjects like the group that turns out to be the Impressionists MANET is there absolutely a focus and also a personal friend a supporter when they all get to know each other [Music] and they all got to know each other at the cafe Dubois claude monet brought his friends see sleigh and bozhil as well as Renoir and Pesaro Edouard Manet was a fixture there and mayonnaise friend the painter Edgar de Gouw often showed up started an argument and then left in the middle of it MANET had first met dagur at the Louvre in 1861 the girl the Louvre was the holy of holies it was his temple he wasn't a religious man but if he had a religion it was art and that's where he went to worship and pay homage he would go there regularly to copy to draw all the way through his life the masters must be copied again and again and only after having given every indication of being a good copyist can you reasonably be given leave to draw a radish from nature edgert dagger dagger had first applied to copy the Masters at the Louvre a decade earlier just after he'd finished his schooling in 1853 [Music] he worked to perfect his technique in preparation for his first submission to the one and only major art exhibition each year the salon but a year passed and then another and Durga seemed unable to paint anything he thought satisfactory his father Auguste who had been supporting his grown son with an ample allowance grew impatient our Rafael is still working but he has yet to turn out a finished product meanwhile the years are slipping by auguste Agha auguste was a banker who seemed to pay more attention to Renaissance art than to managing finances Edgar Degas mother's Celestine had died when he was only 13 years old and Edgar the oldest of five children seemed to keep his grief to himself frankly Durga lacked love he grew up I think emotionally stunted for want of a better word and perhaps he never really caught up he never really made good dagur got his own studio in 1859 and spent much of his time there alone it seems to me de Gouw said that if one wants to be a serious artist one must constantly immerse oneself in solitude Duga found himself lonely and depressed he painted his own image over and over again [Music] always with the same dark expression he was easily discouraged doubted his own ability worried endlessly [Music] as a young man there were moments when he really with drew into himself there were periods of his life that we could point to where he seems to have gone through something that would be called depression today [Music] he continued to paint history painting after history painting and he still was not satisfied with his work [Music] dagur would make sketch after sketch revise make preliminary compositions revise again [Music] then he would start his final version on canvas only to scrape off and begin again [Music] what Doug I was trying to do is probably impossible one side of him was telling him as a young artist he needed to paint these big grand ambitious compositions in a rather traditional manner which were going the salah' and announce his talent another part of him was pulling him in a completely different direction he was getting interested in modern life painting and that dichotomy that he was he had his feet still in the past but his his artistic world was that of the modern late 19th century was tearing these pictures apart in some ways dagger kept on creating history paintings but he also began in the autumn of 1861 to paint modern subjects Duga enjoyed the horse races and endlessly sketched scenes at the track but instead of placing the horses in the midst of a mythical battle dagur painted them as he saw them [Music] with the horse races Digga had found a subject that he would return to again and again and about half a dozen pictures he experimented with modern techniques for bringing across for example the excitement of being in a crowd of people watching horses moving a great speed and a sense of bustle and the sense of noise and so on that you get at a racetrack he cuts off horses at the side of the picture he puts in bright colors in the in the jockeys shirts and in the saddles etc he's really trying to make new lively quite disruptive painting [Music] daga was still an unknown painter in 1865 but his friend Edouard Manet was once again on center stage mayonnaise cell on submission Olympia a painting of a woman who appeared to be a prostitute generated even more outrage than had his dizziness earlier two years earlier MANET did receive congratulations on some seascapes but the congratulations did not make him happy for the seascapes weren't by MANET but by Monet MANET the great figure of that moment had this very controversial new painting there and right nearby was Monet's beautiful picture of the beach at sent address critics came along and and we're saying is it Manny is it Monet is it Manny is it Monet and of course the young pup Monet beans junior to mr. mani was undoubtedly pleased with that kind of confusion whereas the elder man a it is often said was a little distressed that somebody with signs were appropriating his fame or indeed even confusing with his name confusion aside Monet was in fact well received he had submitted his work to the salon for the first time that year and the critics immediately took notice Monsieur Monet unknown yesterday has made a reputation by this picture alone his seascape is the most original and supple the most strongly and harmoniously painted to be exhibited in a long time the praise lifted his spirits but it did not fatten his wallet Monet was low on money but this didn't stop him from making big plans from Paris he traveled to Fontainebleau Forest where he began work on a large-scale painting for the salon he would name it déjeuner sur l'herbe luncheon on the grass monet hope the painting would make him famous but this time his outsized ambition would get the best of him [Music] [Music] [Applause] My dear Brazil if you don't answer me by return mail I'll think you've refused to help me out I'm in despair I beg you my dear friend don't leave me in the lurch I no longer think of anything but my painting and if I don't manage to bring it off I think I'll go mad Monet Claude Monet was in Fontainebleau forest in the summer of 1865 waiting for Basel to compose for his new painting while he waited he painted the effect of light filtering through leaves and he painted studies in preparation for a work he would call de Jun a sir Lam bozhil finally arrived in late August ready to model for several of the figures Monet had a female model with him as well 19 year old Camille dosia he was doing something that was really insanely ambitious he was trying to do something that would in some ways out Shadow Man A's famous station a Sealab [Music] as Monet stood painting at his easel one morning he was suddenly struck in the leg by an errant throw of a metal discus [Music] bozhil helped him into bed and rigged up a mechanism to drip cool water on the wound to reduce the swelling with Monet unable to stand on his injured leg the only artwork that got finished was bezels the improvised field hospital painted in their room at the in leon door in october of 1865 monet returned to paris and started his final version of de jeunesse earlier on a canvas that stood 15 feet high and 20 feet long for a grand total of 300 square feet this vast canvas the station assured layer boys could be the biggest painting he'd ever painted Monet was very ambitious he was ambitious from the beginning and everybody knew it but early in 1866 after eight months of struggle Monet stopped working on déjeuner sur la Mer he decided that he could not finish the painting in time for the salon not long after Monet abandoned his huge project Edouard Manet changed the name of his the bath to déjeuner sur l'herbe MANET de Gouw commented could do nothing but imitate meanwhile Monet was determined to get something substantial done for the seller he borrowed a fancy green dress for his model Camille and quickly set to work he was trying to meet the salon deadline Monet didn't waste time worrying about the pose or the style of the dress it appears in fact that he took his inspiration from the pages of a popular fashion magazine in the 1860s the meal Zola had written of the group which would become called the Impressionists that they wanted to be able to capture the beauties of their moment and that is a concept which ran very deeply through Monet and other Impressionists Monet worked furiously almost non-stop he'd again set himself a steep challenge the portrait of Camille was life-size on a canvas that stood nearly eight feet tall nonetheless Monet managed to finish in a matter of days just in time to submit his painting to the salon jury in March of 1866 the jury found his woman in a green dress acceptable and Claude Monet was in the salon for the second year in a row and for the second year in a row he received glowing reviews now there is a temperament the journalist emile zola commented there is a man among eunuchs [Music] with the help of the favourable notices Monet was able to sell several paintings with money in his pocket he traveled to veal devrait to paint for the summer [Music] Monet wanted to take the idea of painting out of doors on plein air to a new level Claude Monet was ready to make a clean break with the past [Music] Claude Monet settled into veal devrait for the summer of 1866 with him was his young model for woman in the green dress Camille Dozier only by now she was more than just his model she was his mistress Monet asked Camille to pose for several figures for his next painting women in the garden he was looking to capture the natural effects of light and Monet felt that this could only be done outdoors with his subject before him from the first brushstroke to the last the practice of painting on plan a or out of doors was actually a very old practice but when Monet decides to paint pictures exclusively out of doors not touched up in the studio that was radical [Music] auguste renoir meanwhile was in Paris working in a style that was anything but radical he was making a history painting portraying Diana the goddess of the moon and hunt he's still looking to make a name for himself in some ways in the traditional way he's still looking to paint on a scale that will be acceptable at the seller Renoir has no safety net he his parents who are retired in lucien as far as i know he never asked them for a penny for his art laid in march of 1867 Renoir and Monet submitted their work to the salon and they were both rejected nearly a year of planning and work ended in failure - the salon jury their paintings simply were not academic enough even Renoir is history painting diana was rejected because it did not have the perfectly blended colors and smooth surface that was demanded by the jury without a showing at the salon Renoir and Monet had little hope of making any money off their years work and Monet desperately needed money his mistress Camille was pregnant this time Monet got lucky he sold women in the garden for an incredible sum twenty five hundred francs the buyer was his wealthy friend Frederic bozhil bazzill would pay Monet fifty francs a month out of his allowance the seal then wrote Monet's father on his friends behalf begging him to help his son but Adolphe Monet refused to send any money instead he offered free room and board for his son but not for Camille we assume that when Monet had set up with cami that there was a problem with the family that they simply felt that this was a bridge too far that okay what went on in Paris behind closed doors was one thing but having a mistress and an illegitimate child was something that was really a social stigma and that this was something that they simply couldn't be seen to be supporting in June of 1867 Monet accepted his father's offer and returned to his boyhood home on the Normandy coast before leaving Camille he found a medical student who agreed to attend the delivery in exchange for a painting on august 8 1867 Camille gave birth to their baby a healthy boy she named Jean Monet could not even afford the train fare to visit his new son he wrote to Brazil to ask for an advance payment on his purchase of women in the garden he was desperate to send money to Camille but bozhil did not reply August 12th you've been stubborn about answering me I sent you letter after letter rapid post nothing got a rise out of you I've had to ask strangers for loans and subject myself to insults I'm very angry with you August 20th I didn't think you'd abandon Angeles I no longer attribute your silence to an oversea very wrong so I no longer dare believe in your friendship I'm in greater need than ever you know why I'm sick over it October if you don't answer me everything will be finished and thing he would abandon me like this one last time too bad I tell you I'm in desperate strive waited for the postman and every day it's the same it pains me to think of his mother having nothing to eat I think money used basil as some sort of money purse at various points but at the same time basil at times is very willing to help out when he could but at times money's constant letters must have been thoroughly aggravating early in 1868 Monet sold a still life and was able to rejoin Camille and their babies ah they settled at an inn where Monet planned to paint for the spring but before long he ran out of money yet again and the innkeeper's ran out of patience they threw Monet and his little family out into the night without even allowing them to gather their belongings Monet found lodgings for Camille and Sean and then set out for Lahab where he intended to inquire about a commission [Music] when he stopped to change trains instead of continuing on to the half Monet began walking toward the sin [Music] by the time he arrived at the river he found himself in such a state of melancholy that he threw himself headlong into the water [Music] Claude Monet was 27 years old when he threw himself into the sin he was overwhelmed by debt and gloomy about his future but he forced himself to swim back to the river's edge and pull himself out the next day mone sat down and scribbled a short note to buzzy June 29th 1868 I was certainly born under an unlucky star my family has no intention of doing anything more for me I was so upset yesterday that I was stupid enough to hurl myself into the water fortunately no harm came of it mone it was much more likely to be exasperation rather than a serious attempt to end everything I think there's a sense in which he's always driven and he is somebody who was immensely ambitious and you feel there is a real sense of perseverance of sort of dogged determination to win out in the end mone got back on the train and continued on to Lahav once there he paid a visit to an art collector and won a commission to paint several portraits to top it off Monet sold two of his seascapes after Monet finished work on the portraits that fall he took Camille and two-year-old Jean and moved to the Paris suburb of bougie Valle nearby lived Renoir see sleigh and Pizarro Camille Pissarro like Monet had been struggling the 100 francs a month he received from his mother was never enough Pissarro had to support his mistress Julie and their two children so Pissarro took work painting canvas window blinds one of his friends could not resist painting a view of the fine artist reduced to working as an artisan Monet though would not even consider picking up other work to help pay the bills and as the summer of 1869 progressed without a sale Monet could hardly afford to buy food for his family the idea that a painter would wait tables for example is really more modern idea most painters in the 19th century if they were going to be painters survived on this thinnest of lines economically and may do as best they could it was a question of devoting yourself utterly to painting and hopefully having some kind of family support Renoir did his best to help the Monet's bringing leftover food from his parents house whenever he could Renoir though was himself out of money my dear basil I'm staying with my parents and I'm almost always at Monet's they can't hold out much longer they don't eat every day I'm doing almost nothing because I don't have many colors things may go better this month if they go better I'll write you Renoir meanwhile Edgar Duga was able to concentrate fully on his art he did not need to sell at 35 years old he still lived on a generous allowance from his father he kept himself constantly focused on his art always striving for perfection always pushing to break new ground he always seems to be in a step ahead of the company in terms of thinking about what was going on and people became a bit fearful of him for that reason that he wasn't somebody that you argued with he would just cut the ground from under your feet yoga kept himself ahead of the pack by constantly experimenting he experimented with modern life themes with the effect of artificial light and with compositions that gave a sense of capturing a moment in time but by the late 1860's durga could no longer ignore the fact that something was wrong with his eyesight bright light pained him one I refused to focus his eye doctor gave him bad news daga had an irregular field of vision in his left eye and in his right eye almost no vision at all de gah was thrown into despair terrified that he was going to be completely blind his world revolved around his painting and Agha could not shake the feeling that his world was soon to end [Music] Edgard Agha was just in his 30s when his eyesight began to fail him he was tormented by the thought that his art career was ending he begins to worry that he's going to go blind and have periods of depression because of course it's the worst possible thing if you're an artist you can argue that his awareness of his sight problems makes him a more interesting artist and maybe even a better artist because he thought about sight when you read his notebooks you get a sense of how he wants to do new things to see the world at new angles to look at the city from above from below he does this wonderful pastel I think it is of a circus performer suspended from the ceiling but he gets her from below at a very odd angle so he really wants to see things new and I think a certain kind of objective distance he doesn't want to make things pretty because he refused to make things pretty he almost lost a good friend on an evening in 1868 Durga visited with Edouard Manet as always durga brought his sketchbook and when madam na an accomplished pianist began to play de gobby gantu sketch durga returned to his studio to paint the scene and when he was finished he gave the work to the mayonnaise as a gift Edouard Manet took one look at it and suddenly slashed the canvas nearly in half cutting out the portrait of his wife at the piano he thought the digger had made her look ugly Jagga was furious that his painting was ruined but when a friend later asked if he was still mad at MANET - God replied simply how could anyone stay on bad terms with man a man a was known for being charismatic urbane even charming dagger on the other hand was known to be difficult remote and overly argumentative with his fellow male artists he could be very dismissive and very critical his relationship with the women artists he was meeting as a young man are slightly different he was clearly attracted for example to bet morisot who was a very beautiful young woman and she moved in sophisticated cultured families from society and he fell a little bit in love with her towards the end of the 1860s it never came to anything he wasn't at all adept at making love in the 19th century set Edna mr. Duggar came and sat next to me pretending he was going to court me but his courting was confined to a long commentary on Solomon's proverb woman is the desolation of the righteous I certainly do not find his personality attractive he has wit but nothing more your sister Bert Durga was a regular at madam maurices Tuesday night dinners and he would become lifelong friends with Berthe Morisot the maureesa family was very well connected and I think this was very important for Berthe Morisot when she was growing up particularly as a young woman to have people like Edouard Manet visit the home to listen to conversation which went beyond the domestic or beyond the local concerns of an upper middle class family as teenagers in the 1850s Barret and her older sister Edna learned to paint like most other lessons girls of the Maurice O's class received their painting lessons were simply to allow them to appear well-rounded enough to attract a suitable husband but Bert and Edna took their art seriously after they've been painting for only a few years madame Morisot received a disquieting letter from their instructor with characters like your daughter's my teaching will make them painters not minor amateur talents do you really understand what that means in the world of the grand bourgeoisie in which you move it would be a revolution I would even say a catastrophe there were so many arguments that to be a woman artist would SAP one's femininity would make it impossible to be married would make it impossible to be a good mother would make it impossible even to be a good-looking woman and the biggest problem was that women were officially barred from any number of art institutions the Morisot girls were determined to press forward Madame Marie so though was worried that neither Edmund or Bert were concentrating on the real goal marriage in 1868 Edna was 28 bear to 27 and Madame morisot felt it was about time they each found a husband [Music] so she paraded suitors through the house she made comments about her daughter's fading looks but neither Edmund or Barrett showed the slightest interest in marriage both girls it seemed were infatuated with Edouard Manet I definitely think he has a charming character Barrett said he pleases me infinitely but MANET was already married Baird called Manet's wife his fat Susanne [Music] and when MANET accepted a young woman as his student Barrett was instantly jealous [Music] MANET was interested enough in Barrett to ask her to pose for him he was so taken by the dark intelligent even mysterious look that Morisot gave him in the balcony but he went on to make 13 more portraits of her [Music] but Morisot was never alone with men a [Music] through the many sittings Barrett's mother was a constant chaperone [Music] Madame morisot was displeased that her daughter was not spending her time more wisely Delta mo is o persisted long past the age when she should have given up painting and gotten married according to conventional standards of femininity and she became a driven artist in a way that alarmed and saddened her mother Edna though succumbed to the pressure and in March 1869 she married with Ed McGann Barrett became filled with self-doubt Marisa was very tough on herself she was never complacent she was never satisfied she was tormented in many ways somehow she'd internalized a kind of negative self-image she wanders often whether she should give it up at the point that her sister marries and has a baby maureesa herself is tormented and says should I give up painting - is it worth pursuing it's such a struggle dearest admah i'm sad i feel lonely disillusioned and old i've done absolutely nothing since you left and this is beginning to distress me my painting never seemed to me as bad as it has in recent days the sight of these Dobbs nauseates me Bette morisot suffered with what she called lamentation mania for her there were times when both art and life seemed too much to bear [Music] BIRT Morisot struggled to pull herself from depression unmarried at the considerable age of 28 and her art career going nowhere morisot felt nothing but anguish but early in the summer of 1869 she forced herself out of the house for a painting trip she travelled over 500 kilometres to her sister Edna's house in Lorien on the coast of Brittany once there she was ready to paint the trip would mark a new beginning for both morisot and her art Marisa was in a mood to experiment she tried new techniques to portray light and brightness she adopted a broader brushstroke and she worked hard to portray a feeling of a moment captured [Music] when she returned to Paris in September she invited MANET over to see her harbor at L'Oreal MANET couldn't quite understand why she'd left it in what he considered an unfinished state but nonetheless he liked it mani looks at it and says I'd like to have that painting and all of a sudden noise of things MANET the great painter of his generation he wants one of my pictures and I think that was the moment at which she thinks to herself yes I am going to be also a great painter of my generation not long after Morisot returned from l'oréal Monet and Renoir were preparing to go on a painting expedition of their own it had taken them the entire summer to scrape together enough money to buy their painting supplies now in early October they were ready they went across the river from Levesque yen to a nearby swimming area called la grandiere the Frog Pond and they began to experiment Monet and Renoir wanted to capture the shimmer of water reflection movement a fleeting impression and to do so they began using short strokes commas or dots they left brush marks distinctly visible and they paid close attention to the individual highlights of reflected color Monet's and Renoir r--'s experiments at lagron new year marked the debut of the impressionist style there are many moments when one might say Impressionism came into this world tricking screaming slightly messy but certainly in the late 1860's when Monet and Renoir were painting at Laconia in addition to turning to contemporary life they wanted to literally be able to heighten the impact of their work through formal means color brush work novel compositions and this was an absolutely calculated affair this idea of capturing the ephemeral that modernity consists in pinning down what goes by so quickly that modernity is captured in a minute a second a fraction of a second this was part of the Impressionists impulse [Music] the impressionist impulse was not just shared by Monet and Renoir but by Maurice Oh see slay and Pesaro [Music] they were creating art that captured the modern moment but the art world was not at all prepared for such a break with the past [Music] in the spring of 1872 odd Monet decided he would challenge the salon jury and submit his experimental work from LA grandiere Renoir opted to play it safe and shows more conservative paintings the bather and a woman of Algeria the jury accepted Renoir's work Monet's was rejected monet did his best to put his disappointment and anger aside and focus on his personal life that spring he asked Camille to marry him [Music] after nearly four years together and with a three-year-old son in tow Camille dosia and Claude Monet were married in a small civil ceremony on June 28 1870 he took Camille and jaw on our working honeymoon to the resort town of true veer [Music] they're monet painted his new bride on the beach everything seemed bathed in a bright wash of sunlight and air Monet's paintings reflected none of his worry over money or disappointment over his lack of recognition out of his group of artist friends Monet had been the only one to be refused by the salon [Music] but he wasn't the only one traumatized by the jury Morisot was upset by the acceptance of one of her submissions portrait of the artists mother and sister after completing the painting Morisot wondered whether it was good enough to go to the salon so she asked for Manet's opinion a request she would immediately regret MANET said it was fine except the bottom of the dress he took the brushes added a few accents that looked quite good then began my woes once he had started nothing could stop him he made a thousand jokes laughed like a madman gave me the palette took it back again and finally by five in the evening he had made the prettiest caricature possible people were waiting to take it away my only hope is to be rejected bet mahi thought was devastated first of all she worried that the picture was no longer really hers but then also that concern just exacerbated the one she'd had before which is that she thought it wasn't a good enough picture to go to the subtle and she wrote to her mother I'd rather be at the bottom of a river than have that picture shown but mori so soon forgave MANET for touching up her work [Music] Tamura so Edouard Manet was a lifeline to the art world at her mother's Tuesday night dinners Marysol was able to get updates on the conversations that took place at the cafe gear Bois conversations that she as a proper upper-class woman was unable to join one of the things that's very difficult to understand about no hizo is how she could keep a pace with these young men who were having these lively discussions in the cafes and so we have to believe that at these family dinner parties mo hizo was if not showing her pictures to her new friends or looking at their pictures that at least they were talking about painting and painting theory and I always imagined this scene where to the left and to the right people are talking about the weather the latest play and meanwhile unbeknownst to everyone at the table Impressionism is happening right there [Music] but Impressionism was suddenly put on hold [Music] on July 19th 1870 the Emperor of France Napoleon the third declared war on Prussia and all of France was thrown into turmoil [Applause] [Music] frederik bozhil was one of the first to answer the nationwide call to arms he could easily have bought himself out of service but instead he joined the infantry as soon as Renoir learned that bozhil enlisted he fired off a one-line note triple [ __ ] he wrote you are a stark raving bastard bozhil was sent to Algeria for combat training but he seemed to think more about art than war dearest mother I wouldn't be at all disappointed at seeing a real Arab village I haven't seen a single palm tree the Arabs are all poor and filthy however there's plenty here that would make for really lovely paintings frederique [Music] on September 2nd in a battle on the Prussian border the French army was routed Emperor and Napoleon the third was forced to surrender Napoleon had completely underestimated the strength of the Prussian army in Paris a new government quickly formed and sent out a call for all able-bodied men to join the National Guard the Prussians were marching toward Paris Monet not interested in putting himself at risk for Napoleon's folly got on a boat at Lahav and fled to London his wife and son would soon follow Digga and MANET and listed they were both assigned to serve in the artillery Corps Renoir was drafted and posted to a regiment of queer SCA the Armored Cavalry [Music] Pissarro and his family were forced to abandon their home to escape the oncoming Prussian troops they fled to a friend's country house then made their way on to London to wait out the remainder of the war [Music] bezel finished his training in Algeria and by late fall he joined an infantry regiment near Fontainebleau forest he wrote to his parents trying to calm their fears I am sure not to get killed he said I have too many things to do in this life within days of sending the letter Basil's regiment was caught by the advancing Prussia and he found himself in the midst of his first battle it would be his last two bullets ripped through his stomach and on November 28th 1870 Frederick Bozzio died he was just 29 years old [Music] the fighting was later described as a minor skirmish it had no impact on the outcome of the war [Music] buzz eels father spent eight days searching the battlefield for his dead son finally he found him in an unmarked grave and brought him home for a proper burial in Montpelier when the news reached artists like Monet and Renoir who were good friends of Basil's that he had died it was a moment of great sadness he was one of their best friends [Music] he was clearly someone that they had hoped to go forward with after the the franco-prussian war he was part of the inner circle he was a driving force in the Impressionist movement a quiet but driving force and he was suddenly gone [Music] the Prussians surrounded Paris and cut off supplies of firewood and food to the entire city January 1871 my dear Edna we celebrated the birth of the new year in sadness and tears the bombardment never stops it is a sound that reverberates in your head night and day what suffering what dire need it is heart-rending bouts health is visibly affected with all my love your mother On January 28 1871 France surrendered to Prussia giving up Alsace Lorraine and paying heavy reparations but peace was not to last civil war broke out in early April the backers of a left-wing Paris government called the Paris Commune fought street-to-street battles with the national government for control of the city before the civil war ended late in May tens of thousands of Parisians were killed many of them over a few days that came to be known as the semaine song hunt the bloody week many people were shot very some merrily many people were exiled MANET and Agha according to bet more so his mother went through Paris at this time thinking this is the most terrible thing then a even drew a picture of one of these summary executions [Music] the sunny vibrant modern world that had been laid on to canvas by a handful of young artists seemed lost to cold and darkness and desperation but out of the darkness would arise a new France and a new sense of opportunity the small group of impressionist painters felt the time was right to take on the French art establishment and to challenge the conservative art critics [Music] their fight was to make art on their own terms to create art that captured the modern moment to not only survive but to succeed and to triumph [Music] you

Channel: Sherway Academy of Music

Views: 142,678

Rating: 4.8814073 out of 5

Keywords: music education, piano, guitar, violin, voice, bass, organ, TV, visual arts, transportation, history

Id: 58RBqsmvi-Q

Length: 89min 37sec (5377 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018