Applying Manet's method, his invention, his discovery, to the painting
of out-of-doors, the _plein air_ school immediately began to produce
landscapes of astonishing reality by confining their effort to those
values which it is in the power of pigments to imitate. The possible
scale of mere correspondence being of course from one to one hundred,
they secured greater truth by painting between twenty and eighty, we may
say. Hence the grayness of the most successful French landscapes of the
present day--those of Bastien-Lepage's backgrounds, of Cazin's pictures.
Sunlight being unpaintable, they confined themselves to the
representation of what they could represent. In the interest of truth,
of reality, they narrowed the gamut of their modulations, they attempted
less, upheld by the certainty of accomplishing more. For a time French
landscape was pitched in a minor key. Suddenly Claude Monet appeared.
Impressionism, as it is now understood, and as Manet had not succeeded
in popularizing it, won instant recognition. Monet's discovery was that
light is the most important factor in the painting of out-of-doors.
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