Tag Archives: impressionism

Jun 22 2016
Art

totally accessible

AlfredSisley_Seine

“Totally accessible as it is, you will leave unwillingly the banks of a river, so charming, so luminous, so verdant…” – Victorien Sardou

Yeesh, Sardou! Aren’t you being a little dramatic? I mean, I get it, you’re a dramatist, but come on…you’re talking about a river.

Alfred Sisley’s The Seine at Bougival (a pretty popular town for Impressionist painters; see Renoir’s Dance of it here) was painted in 1872. Please marvel at how there are no boats or people to muck up the landscape, as was usually the case for the Seine.

Preach, Sisley. People are always ruining it for me when they get in my way at the bar.

 

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Oct 17 2014
Art

cabbages

pissaro

Even though Claude Monet is oft-called the “Father of Impressionism,” Camille Pissarro was the oldest member. He painted this patch of farmland and put it in the first exhibition of the “Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers” in 1874. The French Salon was the most prestigious way to exhibit, but the artists were like, “Or nah,” about being accepted by the annual jury. So they made their own.
Louis Leroy describes the interaction between him, another critic Joseph Vincent, and this work:

“Those are cabbages,” I told him in a gently persuasive voice.

“Oh, the poor wretches, aren’t they caricatured! I swear not to eat any more as long as I live!”

“Yet it’s not their fault if the painter … ”

“Be quiet, or I’ll do something terrible.”

I used to feel that way about cabbages, Joe. I definitely do about the smell of ’em.

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