The Impressionists at Argenteuil

The Impressionists at Argenteuil

Paul Hayes Tucker

National Gallery of Art, Washington

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of ArtHartford
The exhibition is made possible by United Technologies Corporation

The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art,

Washington, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford

It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts

and the Humanities

Educational programming at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

is supported by Christie's

Additional support for the Hartford showing of the exhibition comes

from the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation

Exhibition dates

National Gallery of Art, Washington

28 May - 20 August 2000

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford

6 September - 3 December 2000

Catalogue © 2000. All rights reserved. Board of Trustees,

National Gallery of Art, Washington

Produced by the Editors Office, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Editor, Tarn Curry Bryfogle

Production Manager, Chris Vogel

Designed and typeset by Cummings & Good, Chester, Connecticut

Typeset in Granjon

Printed on Biberist Allegro 150 gsm by Mondadori Printing,

Verona, Italy

Clothbound books distributed by Yale University Press,

New Haven and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tucker, Paul Hayes, 1950-

The impressionists at Argenteuil / Paul Hayes Tucker.

p. cm.

Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington,

May 28-Aug. 20, 2000, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum

of Art, Hartford, Sept. 6-Dec. 3, 2000.

ISBN 0-89468-249-0 (pbk.) — ISBN 0-300-08349-1 (cloth)

1. Impressionism (Art)—France—Argenteuil—Exhibitions. 2. Artist

colonies—France—Argenteuil—Exhibitions. 3. Impressionist artists—

France—Argenteuil—Exhibitions. 4. Argenteuil (France)—Social

life and customs — 19th century. I. National Gallery of Art (U.S.).

II. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. III. Title.

00-028731

Note to the Reader

Dimensions are given in centimeters, followed by inches in parentheses;

height precedes width.

Front cover: Claude Monet, The Highway Bridge and Boat Basin

(detail), 1874, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (cat. 28)

Back cover: Auguste Renoir, Monet Painting in His Argenteuil Garden

(detail), 1873, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,

Hartford, Connecticut, Bequest of Anne Parish Titzell (cat. 19)

Frontispiece: Claude Monet, The Promenade at Argenteuil (detail),

c. 1872, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection (cat. 8)

Page 6: Auguste Renoir, The Seine at Argenteuil (detail), c. 1875,

Private Collection, Switzerland (cat. 49)

Page 8: Claude Monet, The Gladioli (detail), c. 1876,

The Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase (cat. 47)

ND551.A74T83

2000

759.4'367—dc21
Contents

Directors' Foreword 7

Lenders to the Exhibition 9

Acknowledgments 10

On Place and Meaning: 12

Argenteuil and the Impressionists,

1871-1894

Catalogue of the Exhibition 42

Index of Paintings in the Exhibition 178

Photographic Credits 179

Directors' Foreword

Although less well known today than Giverny, the small

suburban town of Argenteuil, situated down the Seine from

Paris, was the single most important site for the birth of

impressionism. It was here that Claude Monet and his colleagues invented and codified a new artistic language of

broken brushwork and divided light and color, addressing

themes of unprecedented modernity. Working in the open

air, often side by side, they depicted sailboats and regattas,

train trestles and towpaths, gardens and factories, as well as

their families and each other. With apparent spontaneity, they

captured not only the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere

but also the character and temper of the age, with subjects

that struck the critics as startlingly progressive. Monet first

settled at Argenteuil in 1871 and was joined at various times

by Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Eugène

Boudin, and Gustave Caillebotte. The subject matter and

style of their work achieved nothing less than a revolution

in the art of painting. In a uniquely topical fashion they

defined the genius loci, the spirit of place of Argenteuil, its

landscape, peoples, customs, and pastimes.

A working town, Argenteuil had been known for its

tanneries, silk mills, ironworks, and gypsum mines, which

produced what is still known as "plaster of Paris." The

town was also synonymous with the new craze for leisure

boating. Situated only fifteen minutes by train from the

Gare Saint-Lazare, it beckoned as a convenient weekend

excursion destination. Though extensively damaged in the

Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Argenteuil was quickly

rebuilt and soon drew back its well-to-do day tourists. In the

intensively creative years of the 18705 Monet and his fellow

avant-garde painters shared companionship, recreation, and

the stimulus of intellectual and artistic exchange. It was in

Argenteuil that the group perfected the classic impressionist

style, conceived the first impressionist exhibition of 1874, and

hatched strategies for the promotion of their art.

The present exhibition was initiated by Peter C. Sutton,

former director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of

Art, who persuaded the noted impressionist scholar Paul

Hayes Tucker to serve as guest curator and author of the

insightful catalogue. Bringing together more than fifty paintings, many of which have rarely been lent by their private

owners, this is the first exhibition ever dedicated to the

subject. Organized jointly by the National Gallery of Art

and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, it opens

in Washington in May 2000, then travels to Hartford in

September of 2000. We are abidingly grateful to the lenders,

whose sacrifice in making their works temporarily available

to us ensures the success of the show.

We wish to thank United Technologies Corporation,

especially George David, chairman and chief executive

officer, for making the exhibition possible. United

Technologies has been a friend of both the National Gallery

and the Wadsworth Atheneum for many years, and we

are grateful for their continuing support. The show has

also received an indemnity from the Federal Council on

the Arts and the Humanities.

Earl A. Powell III

Director

National Gallery of Art

Washington

Elizabeth M. Kornhauser

Acting Director

Wadsworth Atheneum

Museum of Art

Hartford

7

Lenders to the Exhibition

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo

The Art Institute of Chicago

Mr. and Mrs. Trammell Crow

The Detroit Institute of Arts

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Fondation Corboud, courtesy of the

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

Kroller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Kunstmuseum Bern

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon,

Upperville, Virginia

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The National Gallery, London

National Gallery of Art, Washington

National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff

Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum)

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Portland Art Museum (Oregon)

Private Collections

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,

Williamstown

John M. and Sally B. Thornton Trust

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,

Hartford

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

9
Acknowledgments

This exhibition and the accompanying catalogue would not

have been possible without the generous assistance of many

individuals, beginning with Peter C. Sutton, former director

of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, who invited

me to undertake the project in 1997 and has supported me

in its realization at every stage. There could be no better

colleague. I also owe a great debt to Earl A. Powell III, director

of the National Gallery of Art, who has lent the considerable

resources of his institution—including eight major paintings

by Monet, Renoir, and Sisley—to ensure an exemplary

presentation of the groundbreaking works of the impressionists at Argenteuil.

Among the museum directors, curators, private collectors,

and professional friends who gave generously of their time

and assistance in securing key loans for the exhibition, I

would like to thank especially Gunter Abels, David Alston,

George Ayoub, Donald Bacigalupi, Daniel Bauman, Graham

W.J. Béai, Brigitte Béranger, Helen Braham, Richard Brettell,

John Buchanan Jr., Dr. Rainer Budde, E. A. Carmean Jr.,

Shun Chikaato, Michael Conforti, Mr. and Mrs. Trammell

Crow, Marianne Delafond, Anne Distel, Douglas Dreishpoon,

Douglas Druick, Colin Ford, Katsunori Fukaya, Caroline

Durand-Ruel Godfroy, Gloria Groom, Anne d'Harnoncourt,

Dr. Christian von Hoist, Steven Kerns, Aliene Laws, Janice

Levin, Henri Loyrette, Neil MacGregor, Seiro Mayekawa,

Mrs. Paul Mellon, Takashi Miura, Katsumi Miyasaki,

Philippe de Montebello, John Murdock, Hideo Omi, Joachim

Pissarro, Richard Rand, Jock Reynolds, Christopher Riopelle,

Joseph Rishel, Duncan Robinson, Malcolm Rogers, Simon

Sainsbury, Barbara Scháfer, Douglas G. Schultz, Peter-Klaus

Schuster, George Shackelford, David Solkin, Toni Stooss,

Evert J. van Straaten, Tsuneshi Suzuki, John M. and Sally B.

Thornton, Gary Tinterow, Catherine M. Wilson, and Jim

Wood as well as those who wish to remain anonymous.

The exhibition has also benefited from the discrete help

of friends in the trade: William Acquavella, Alex Apsis,

Joseph Baillio, William Beadleston, Ernst Beyeler, James

Borynack, Desmond Corcoran, J. Barry Donahue, Michael

Findlay, Thomas Gibson, Robert Gordon, Paul Herring,

Waring Hopkins, Ay-Wang Hsai, Mariko Ito, Yasunari

Kumon, John Lumley, Charles Moffett, David Nahmad,

David Nash, Maria Reinshagen, Elizabeth Royer, James

Roundell, Michel Strauss, Sandra Tschuden, Alec Wildenstein,

Daniel Wildenstein, Guy Wildenstein, and Sarah Zorochin.

A special thanks as well to Anna Swinbourne.

In Argenteuil, Gérard Troupeau and Jean-Paul Mirbelle

of the Musée du Vieil Argenteuil allowed me access to important visual materials, while Isabelle Lefeuvre, the city archivist,

came to my aid with documents and answers to last-minute

inquiries. Lucienne Legrande-Dreher proved to be the spirit

of this project, as of others before, with innumerable gestures

of kindness. The distinguished mayor of Argenteuil, Roger

Ouvrard, provided essential support, as did his colleague

across the river, the député des Hautes-de-Seine and mayor

of Gennevilliers, Jacques Brunhes, together with his chargé

de mission, Michel Ratard.

Many other individuals contributed to aspects of the

catalogue. Stephen Frankel offered critical advice at an early

stage, pulling me back from many an entangled phrase.

Robert Herbert read the completed manuscript with his typical

acumen and made many valuable suggestions. So did Kate

Diamond and Bruce Garr, both of whom proved ever reliable.

I received unfailing support from Suzanne Delay on many

fronts. Barbara Bruce Williams gave helpful legal guidance

over many months. I am also grateful to James Allen, Richard

Doherty, Adene Gregman, Mark Henderson, Colin Heywood,

Gerard Jourdas, Rico Mochizuki, Olivier Muraire, Antoine E.

Naaman, John Nicoll, and Valerie Steele. Sarah Goodwin,
chair of the English department at Skidmore College, and

Professor Barry Goldensohn made available office space,

where I wrote much of this book in the summer of 1999,

while my colleagues in the art department at University of

Massachusetts Boston tolerated my sometimes distracted

presence in Boston.

Marie Dalton-Meyer manages the cultural programs and

sponsorships at United Technologies Corporation, which has

generously supported both the exhibition and the publication of

this lavishly illustrated catalogue. Peter Good and his design

team, especially Kirsten Livingston, transformed the raw

material of the book into a lively and elegant final production.

I greatly appreciate the expert work of the staff at the

two organizing museums. In the National Gallery of Art

exhibitions office D. Dodge Thompson, Jennifer Cipriano,

Jennifer Bumba-Kongo, Kathleen McCleery Wagner, Jessica

Stewart, and April Canfield were indispensable allies. Senior

curator of European paintings Philip Conisbee was a model

confrere, lending his time and energy at critical junctures and

offering insightful comments on a draft of the essay. In his

office Florence E. Coman and Ana Maria Zavala provided

knowledgeable assistance on many occasions. In the editors

office Chris Vogel oversaw the production of the catalogue,

Mary Yakush managed contract negotiations, and Tarn Curry

Bryfogle applied her remarkably refined eye and mind to the

manuscript, while Sara Sanders-Buell went to great lengths

to gather photographic material. Susan Arensberg and Mari

Griffith were responsible for the excellent brochure and exhibition texts. Sandy Masur and Susan McCullough worked

closely with the corporate sponsor, United Technologies

Corporation. Deborah Ziska orchestrated publicity and

press coverage. Marilyn Shaw and Isabelle Jain crafted legal

documents. Sally Freitag and Hunter Hollins handled the

myriad registrarial arrangements to assemble the works in

Washington, while Mervin Richard and Ann Hoenigswald

provided conservation expertise. The design talents of Mark

Leithauser, Gordon Anson, Donna Kwederis, and William

Bowser became evident in the splendid installation.

At the Wadworth Atheneum Museum of Art the exhibition has enjoyed the skillful guidance and support of acting

director Betsy Kornhauser. Nicole Wholean coordinated

countless aspects of the presentation in Hartford, while

Matthew Siegel supervised registrarial details. Dina Plapler

was instrumental in securing the generous support of United

Technologies as well as other welcome assistance for the

Wadsworth's venue.

To relieve some of the pressure of the project, I relied

enormously on my family, Maggie, Jonathan, and Jennie, who

responded with a continual supply of patience and understanding, for which I will be forever grateful. They merit

more than I was able to give in return and certainly more

than this humble thanks, as I hope they know.

My father, who has always been my touchstone for sane

and clear writing, like my grandfather Gariton Hayes, was

unable to read this manuscript owing to illness. It is the only

one he has missed. My loving mother read it to him with her

typical devotion, underscoring how much recognition they

both deserve.

During the course of this project, two special people on

two sides of the Atlantic slipped out of my life, taken by different forms of terminal cancer: Sally Kolker and Sam Walker.

Their loss is a painful reminder of how fickle existence can

be, but their legacies—of spirit, deed, and character—live on,

as I trust they always will. It is therefore to Sally and Sam and

their respective families that I dedicate this book.

Paul Hayes Tucker

11
On Place and Meaning:

Argenteuil and the Impressionists,

1871-1894

Paul Hayes Tucker

In late 1885, when the impressionists were frayed and factionalized and when all except Gustave Caillebotte had

abandoned Argenteuil as a communal site for advanced

painting, the satirical magazine Gil Bias published the first

installment of a new novel by Emile Zola. Entitled

"L'Oeuvre" (literally "The Work," but often translated "The

Masterpiece"), the story was serialized in eighty issues of the

magazine and published as his fourteenth book in April 1886.

Unlike his previous fiction, "L'Oeuvre" focused on the Paris

art world, a terrain Zola knew well. From the early i86os

onward he had followed developments in French art closely,

producing a substantial body of criticism of contemporary

painting and sculpture on which he drew for this not-sothinly-veiled portrayal of avant-garde affairs in the capital.

Halfway through the novel, the hero-artist, Claude

Lantier, is feted by his friends at a dinner in Paris. Four years

earlier he had established himself as the leader of what was

dubbed the "Open-Air School" after he exhibited a controversial painting of a nude woman lying in a forest with

a clothed man beside her and two nude females in the

background "rolling together on the grass."1 In the process of

painting the picture, Lantier had fallen in love with the

woman who posed for the foreground figure. Without

warning, he decided to leave the city with her to establish a

new life in the country, fleeing the fracas of the Salon and the

abuse of critics—in short, forsaking his career.

The lure of Paris was too strong, however, and he eventually returned to take up the fight for recognition, much

to the delight of his fellow "open-air" painters: "Prostrate

with admiration, they poured out all their hopes, told him

what great store they set by him...he alone, who had all the

makings of a great painter and such a firm grasp of the

requirements of his art, was worthy of being hailed as the

master." He was essential, they claimed, because "the OpenAir School had developed considerably...but its efforts lacked

cohesion....Its new recruits turned out little more than

sketches and were easily satisfied with impressions tossed

off on the spur of the moment. What was needed was the man

of genius whose work would be the living image of their

theories." Full of eagerness, they proclaimed their agenda:

"To conquer the public, open a new period, create a new art!"

This brief passage in Zola's lengthy tale is laced with

familiar references. The Open-Air School is clearly modeled

on the impressionists; Lantier's galvanizing painting is based

on Edouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, the succès de

scandale of the Salon des Refusés of 1863; the leader's flight to

the country is analogous to the moves of various impressionists from Paris to the suburbs in the 18705 and i88os; and

the notion that Lantier's followers were merely producing

mindless sketches derives from the diatribes of conservative

critics who lambasted the impressionists for this perceived

shortcoming. Zola knew the impressionists' work and agenda

firsthand. He had defended them as emerging artists in

the i86os in a series of scathing articles that cost him his job

at the Paris newspaper L'Evénement. He continued to write

about them in the 18705, although he had lost some of

his enthusiasm for their achievements. He thus prepared his

book with considerable authority.

Yet there are more subtle implications to this account, for

Zola was informally gathering material for "L'Oeuvre" when
the impressionists formalized their movement in the 18708

and Argenteuil arose as a primary locus. Zola used the abovequoted passage, for example, to affirm the importance of

Paris as the center of contemporary art. It is where reputations were made or broken, where theories were formulated,

debated, and tested in front of a discerning public, and where

great art was created, often with the city as its subject. Thus

when Lantier walked the streets of Paris in the weeks after

dining with his friends, he "could feel [the city] in the very

marrow of his bones....Never had he experienced such an

urge to work, never had he known such hope or felt that all

he had to do was stretch out his hand and produce masterpieces which would put him in the rank which was his by

right, the first rank."2 The suggestion of course is that the

countryside fosters artistic dallying, if not decline. In the years

Lantier spent away from the capital, he had painted nothing of

importance, whereas the masterpiece he began soon after his

reunion dinner was destined for history because it was a view

of the heart of Paris from the working quays of the Seine.

Despite Zola's insistence on a carefully applied scientific

naturalism, his sleight of hand and personal bias are felt

throughout the book. Most telling is the emphasis on what

he considers three outstanding problems: the technical lapses of

the group, its need for strong leadership, and the lack of a single

painting to secure the artists' position in the annals of French art.

Zola had voiced these concerns in the 1870$, asserting in a review

of the second impressionist exhibition in 1876, for example,

that the group needed "more painters sufficiently talented to

bolster the new artistic formula with masterpieces."3 In 1879 he

chastised Manet for not having a hand that equaled his eye. In

the i88os his concerns became more emphatic, causing him to

break with the painters and to write "L'Oeuvre."

Zola was right on several counts. First, none of the impressionists created a single masterpiece that set the standard and

led the way; no canvas of the 1870$ equaled Manet's Luncheon

on the Grass or his similarly provocative Olympia. The success

of the movement derived instead from a broad body of work

created by different artists with distinct personalities. Second,

although Manet and Monet were often identified as leaders of

the group, the impressionists did not depend on one exclusive

authority; in fact Manet never exhibited with the impressionists

in their independent shows. The success of the movement

therefore depended on group dynamics: it was only through a

collective vision and communal effort that the impressionists

were able to "open a new period, and create a new art," as

Lantier's Open-Air School so fiercely desired.

In notes he made before beginning his book, Zola

declared that he wanted to reveal the difficulties of creating

great art and grappling with truth, hoping in the end to convince a hesitant public of the value of innovation, including

his own. He was successful in this (and readers recognized the

significance of his subtext). But he was sorely mistaken in

terms of French painting, for history sorted out the field in a

way that Zola did not foresee—indeed, in a way that would

probably have surprised Lantier and his fictional contemporaries: for it is the impressionists who have been granted

highest honors, largely on the basis of their accomplishments

of the 18705, mostly realized at Argenteuil.

There are many ironies in this turn of events. Chief

among them, and most familiar, is that the impressionists

earned their reputations and livelihoods from paintings that

appeared unfinished to many, as Zola frequently pointed out.

Nothing would have riled the conservative factions of his day

more than knowing that their time-honored principles of

disciplined paint application, decorous color choice, and elevated subject matter would be found inferior to the seemingly

spontaneous scumblings of the riotous impressionists. They

would have decried the lowering, or abandonment, of standards as well as the slandering and shunning of the noble art

of the past, which they had revered and emulated. To the

most resistant, the triumph of impressionism would have

been tantamount to a national disaster, as the academic artist

Jean-Léon Gérôme claimed in 1894 when the government

was debating the merits of accepting Caillebotte's bequest of

his unparalleled collection of impressionist paintings.4

Although Zola appropriated Monet's first name for his

protagonist and gave the rural village that Lantier adopted

the trappings of Monet's Giverny, he did not model the character on any one figure in the impressionist group. As the

impressionists themselves realized—and all of them read the

book except Manet, who had died in 1883—Lantier was a

deftly constructed amalgam of Monet, Manet, and Paul

Cézanne, Zola's boyhood friend from Aix-en-Provence. This

provides another irony, for twentieth-century scholars were

quick to disassociate Manet and Cézanne from the impressionists. They claimed that Manet was never officially part

of the group and that Cézanne was a postimpressionist or

protocubist. Arguments about these labels persist.

In a further irony, while the impressionists, minus Manet,

exhibited together and formed a bona fide though contentious

association, they resisted calling themselves "the impressionists." Unlike Lantier's Open-Air School, they did not give

their group a title. They did not want to be pegged or labeled

by critics, and they did not want to be seen as a "school"

or a movement. Thus for their first joint exhibition, they

chose the commercially based appellation "Société anonyme

des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc." This underscored their communal orientation, aesthetic neutrality, and

business focus. They maintained a similar, nondescriptive

title for each of their eight exhibitions held between 1874

and 1886, although for the third, staged in 1877, they put a

sign above the door that read "Exposition des impressionnistes." The catalogue for the show, however, bore the title

"Troisième exposition."

The greatest irony may well lie not in specific people,

paintings, or names, but in the issue of place. Zola's emphasis on

Paris as the center of French culture was entirely appropriate.

It was the continuing hub — for historical references, sales,

On Place and Meaning 
criticism, and exchange of theories. In the 18705, though, the

majority of the impressionists spent most of their time not

in the capital but in the outlying suburbs. And the suburb

that became the most important to them and their movement

was Argenteuil.

Some Facts and Figures

Located only eleven kilometers from the center of Paris,

Argenteuil was a fifteen-minute train ride from the Gare

Saint-Lazare. Monet moved to the town in December

1871 after nearly ten months of self-imposed exile in England

and Holland during the Franco-Prussian War and the

Commune insurrection of 1870-1871. He stayed for about six

years, leaving in January 1878. All of his impressionist friends

except Morisot and Cassait visited at various times—Sisley,

Renoir, Manet, Caillebotte, Pissarro, Degas, and Cézanne.

Some came singly, others in groups, some to visit and

share a meal, others to paint and strategize about their

goals. Collectors came too—Georges de Bellio, Georges

Charpentier, Victor Chocquet—as did critics, such as

Théodore Duret and perhaps Paul Alexis.

Monet was enormously prolific in Argenteuil, painting

about 180 canvases, for an average of 30 pictures a year, or one

every twelve days.5 Pissarro, Degas, and Cézanne visited

without producing any work. (Pissarro, the patriarch of the

group, was fruitfully ensconced in Pontoise, a town of very

different character from Argenteuil; Degas, the archParisian, rarely painted anywhere outside the capital; and

Cézanne was either with Pissarro in Pontoise or in his native

Aix in the south of France.) But Sisley, Renoir, Manet, and

Caillebotte, painting in and around Argenteuil, created some

of the most novel canvases of their careers. Combined with

Monet's achievements, their paintings constitute one of the

most remarkable bodies of work in the history of art, making

Argenteuil synonymous with impressionism and a touchstone

for the development of Western visual culture.

Most of the impressionists first came to the agréable petite

ville, as guidebooks of the period called Argenteuil, because

Monet was there. After he left, Caillebotte bought land in Petit

Gennevilliers across the river from Argenteuil, built a house on

the shores of the Seine, and declared it to be his permanent

residence in 1888. Renoir continued to visit the area, mostly, it

seems, to see Caillebotte. Manet may actually have known these

suburbs better than anyone else in the group, for his family

owned a home in Gennevilliers, slightly closer to Paris. It

had been his summer retreat in the 18505 and i86os and may

have figured in his formulation of the landscape setting for his

notorious Luncheon on the Grass. Although Manet never

painted Gennevilliers itself and worked in Argenteuil only

briefly in the 18705, he may have introduced Monet to the area

by putting him in touch with Mme Emilie-Jeanne Aubry, who

owned property in Argenteuil, including a house that she

rented to Monet in late 1871. It was the first house Monet and

his family occupied in the town. In fact it was the first house he

could call his own since the early i86os, when he had left his

boyhood home in Saint-Adresse on the Normandy coast to

seek his destiny as a painter in Paris.6

It is not clear why Monet chose to settle in Argenteuil.

There is no evidence that he had visited the town prior to

making his decision, although he may have passed through it

when commuting to Paris from Normandy and from other

suburbs in which he lived and worked in the i86os: Sèvres

in 1866, Bonnières in 1868, and Saint-Michel near Bougival

in 1869-1870. Given the number of other towns he painted

during the decade—Saint-Adresse, Honfleur, Le Havre,

Etretat, Fecamp, Chailly, Trouville—it seems strange that he

did not opt to return to any of them and instead moved to

Argenteuil; all were delightful places and had inspired

significant paintings that expanded his repertoire of subjects,

enhanced his reputation among his contemporaries, and

advanced his own sense of direction as an artist. But perhaps

he wanted something new and different. Never having stayed

in one place for more than twelve months during the i86os

and then having left France for England and Holland, he

may also have been yearning for a permanent home.

Other factors may have contributed to his decision.

In November 1870, during his exile in London, he turned

thirty. Life expectancy for the average thirty-year-old French

male at the time was about sixty, which meant he had reached

middle age. Moreover, his father died while Monet was

abroad; since his mother had died in the 1850$, this second

loss probably made him more aware of his own mortality.

Finally, just before leaving France in 1870, he had married

Camille Doncieux, who had been his model and lover since

1865; they had had a son, Jean, in 1867, who was four and

nearing school age when they returned to France.

Argenteuil was blessed with many advantages. It was

closer to Paris than were any of the suburbs in which Monet

had lived during the i86os, and it had excellent rail service to

and from the capital, with trains running every half hour. It

had good housing, a healthy economy, and stores for virtually

everything one needed. It also offered a range of motifs that

modern landscape painters such as Monet and his impressionist colleagues would have found attractive, most notably a

spectacular stretch of the Seine. After tracing an arc through

Paris, this national waterway took a northward turn at

Bellevue-Billancourt, looped back on itself at Saint-Denis,

and curved north again at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on its way

to Le Havre and the English Channel. The Seine reached its

greatest width of 195 meters and dropped to its deepest level

of 2i meters as it flowed from Epinay to Bezons, or right

past Argenteuil (fig. i). It was unencumbered by islands or

projecting points of land along its shores, so residents could

profit from the river's fullest expanse.

M THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
This natural asset was not fully exploited until the 18505,

when the town fathers, at the urging of Paris partisans, sponsored the first sailing races held in the suburbs (fig. 2).

The initiative proved so successful that such races became

regular events. Over the next decade La Société des Régates

Parisiennes, the most important boating club in the Paris

region, established the headquarters for its sailing club, le

Cercle de la Voile de Paris, on the banks of the Seine at

Argenteuil, holding races and festivals there until 1894. (This

club still exists, with headquarters in Paris and at Les

Mureaux, a smaller town downriver.) In fact Argenteuil

became well known for boating activities of all kinds—

steamboat races, rowing races, water jousts, and general

pleasure boating—which it promoted in local newspapers as

well as posters in and around Paris. These marketing efforts

paid off. The town became the official site for international

sailing competitions held in conjunction with the 1867

World's Fair as well as for other prestigious aquatic events

over the ensuing decades.

Fig. 2. Poster for

Argenteuil's first

regatta, August 1850.

Argenteuil Archives

Fig. i. Map showing Argenteuil in relation to the Seine, Gennevilliers, and Bezons

On Place and Meaning 
It is therefore not surprising that the impressionists

focused on the Seine and its nautical offerings. They were not

the first, however. Soon after Argenteuil became accessible

from Paris by rail in 1851, artists began to make it the subject

of their work, as evident from a drawing by Morel Fatio that

is inscribed 1866 (fig. 3). Commercial artists were regularly

engaged by newspapers and magazines to provide illustrations of recreation spots, including Argenteuil (fig. 4). Similar

views appeared during the years Monet and his friends

painted in Argenteuil.

Those who came for these boating events found much

to enjoy in addition to the races, fireworks, and occasional

carnival. There was a beautiful promenade along the river,

popular with residents as well as visitors (fig. 5). Bordered

on one side by the waters of the Seine, the well-worn path

was lined on the other side by stately chestnut trees that lent

shade and grandeur to the site. The promenade provided

breathtaking views of the river from Argenteuil to neighboring Bezons and on to the heights of the Saint-Germain hills

in the distance. A similar path ran along the opposite bank

of the Seine (fig. 6). It was more modestly planted with a

single row of trees and interrupted by houses, including those

Caillebotte and his brother built in the i88os. The Argenteuil

promenade was spared such intrusions because it was part

of the Champs de Mars, an elliptical, densely planted, public

section of town (fig. 7). The Champs de Mars was defined

by the promenade and by the Boulevard Héloïse, one of the

town's main thoroughfares. For centuries the area had been

an island, cut off from the shore by an arm of the Seine. In

the 17905 this channel was the suspected breeding ground

for a malaria epidemic. Community leaders decided to rid

themselves of the problem and, over the next thirty years,

used the town's sixteenth-century fortifications to fill it in,

creating the Boulevard Héloïse in the process. Delightfully

cool during the summer, the Champs de Mars was a gathering place for locals throughout the year and a site for

municipal events, such as the town's food market, which

came every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, a tradition that

continues to this day.

In addition to the Boulevard Héloïse, which attracted the

attention of both Monet and Sisley in 1872 (cats. 4, 5),

Argenteuil had streets and alleyways that were as rich in

history as they were visually appealing. This is because

the town dated back to the seventh century A.D. when a

wealthy nobleman, Seigneur Ermanric, and his wife received

permission from Childebert III to found a nunnery in

"Argentoïalium." In the ninth century Charlemagne gave the

nunnery what was said to be the tunic of Christ, which made

Argenteuil a pilgrimage destination for hundreds of years. In

the twelfth century the nunnery was home to its most famous

prioress, Héloïse, who retired there following a scandalous

relationship with her Parisian tutor, the theologian Pierre

Abélard (hence the name of one of Argenteuil's most important streets). Other notable residents included the fiery

Fig. 3. Morel Fatio, Sailing Race at Argenteuil, 13 May 1866.

Musée du Vieil Argenteuil

Fig. 4. Paul Renouard, "Autumn Regattas at Argenteuil," wood

engraving by M. Moller, Le Monde Illustré (1879)

Fig. 5. Photograph of the promenade along the Seine at

Argenteuil, late nineteenth century

16 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
eighteenth-century revolutionary Mirabeau, the nineteenthcentury composer Ambrose Thomas, who wrote "La Marseillaise," and Monet's older contemporary, the academic

painter Ary Scheffer. Georges Braque was born there in 1882.

Argenteuil developed around the nunnery following the

plan of a Roman grid, with the river defining the southeastern edge. Over the years the rigor of the grid relaxed,

creating a looser pattern of altered rectangles and squares that

added to the town's charm. No artist, commercial or otherwise, seems to have taken much interest in these picturesque

streets, or in the place as a whole, prior to Monet's arrival,

although there is at least one engraving from the seventeenth

century that shows the town's fortifications and a number

Fig. 6. Photograph of the Petit Gennevilliers promenade,

late nineteenth century

Fig. 7. Map showing streets of Argenteuil, including the Champs de Mars

ARGENTEUIL
Fig. 8. Engraving of Argenteuil, c. 1610. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

from the eighteenth that depict it as a bucolic site (figs. 8, 9).

Dozens of images commemorate the foiled marriage of

Héloïse and her lover in subsequent years, as interest in this

steamy medieval affair continued through the nineteenth

century and impressed itself on the minds of Parisians,

earning Argenteuil a permanent place in history.

Argenteuil had other reasons to be recognized and

remembered. Most significant, the fields around the town at

one time supported vineyards that yielded a grape of notable

quality; in the seventeenth century le vin d'Argenteuil was

selected by Abbé de Marolles under Louis XIII as one of the

best wines in the Ile de France.7 Whether due to changes

in soil conditions, weather, or agricultural practices, the

wine descended from its once-heralded heights to a level of

mediocrity in the nineteenth century, but it was still consumed and enjoyed—mostly because it was inexpensive.

Monet ordered his wines from Bordeaux and Narbonne, a

discerning but far more costly choice.

The town was also known for its asparagus, which,

unlike its wine, improved in quality, quantity, and fame in the

nineteenth century. Although grown in many locations

around Paris, the variety produced in Argenteuil was consistently judged to be superior and was anointed grand prize

winner at the World's Fairs of 1867 and 1878. Served at

the finest restaurants in Paris, it was also exported around the

globe. Manet featured Argenteuil's asparagus in a number of

his still lifes.

Equally renowned were Argenteuil's gypsum deposits,

which were substantial enough to have provided the town a

steady income from the time of their discovery in the Middle

Ages. François I used them for his vast building campaigns in

the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century the mines

became ever more important, because gypsum is the essential

ingredient in plaster. With the expansion of Paris and its

suburbs, construction boomed, increasing the demand for

plaster walls, ceilings, and decorative ornaments. In the 18705

the town could claim four mines operating at full capacity.

Although the plaster used during this period came from

Argenteuil and neighboring towns, it became known as

"plaster of Paris," a term still in use.

Guidebooks in the late nineteenth century generally

noted these points when reviewing Argenteuil's history and

contributions to the region. They also drew attention to

an old windmill, the Moulin d'Orgemont, that sat on top of a

hill northeast of the town near the gypsum mines. The mill

had not been used in decades to grind grain, but it offered

fabulous views of the surrounding area and, because of that,

l" VUF, DKS ENVIRONS D'AKGKXTKUII/

A ''¿ris .-A--Í A- /.'./««.ry. r,v ./.• l.i ffn.-/ifn.-, /,t A-rls < IvAvv ,,u ./<•/>'•«.' </.• 1,1 ra,- ¿:' A .ti.i '.

Fig. 9. Jeanne Deny, "View of Argenteuil," engraving by

Louis Masquelin, late eighteenth century

18 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARCENTEUIL
had been converted into a restaurant that still operates today

(fig. TO). Monet painted it once from the vineyards at the foot

of the Orgemont hill, and at least once in the background of

a view of the Seine from Petit Gennevilliers (fig. 22). When

Caillebotte painted from the same vantage point ten years

later, he made sure the mill stood out against the sky (cat. 29).

Both Monet and Caillebotte climbed to the top of the

Orgemont hill to take in the view and to work (figs, n, 12).

With the Seine snaking its way through the valley below, they

could see Argenteuil nestled along the near bank of the river.

The plains of Petit Gennevilliers stretched out on the other

side to meet the fields of Gennevilliers, which then gave way

to a beckoning distance and finally to a horizon broken

by the skyline of Paris. The world was at their fingertips,

at once graspable and elusive, open to being rendered

in all its particulars or seen merely as a collection of abstract

shapes and patterns. For Monet and Caillebotte the beauty

of the site lay in details that were close enough to be apprehended rather than in distant forms. Like most of their

impressionist colleagues, they preferred the tangible and tactile to the vague and ethereal. Panoramic views therefore do

not appear prominently in their Argenteuil oeuvres, except

when grounded by elements in the immediate foreground,

such as the path in Monet's painting, or by man-made forms

like a section of a bridge. From the heights of Orgemont the

most obvious nonnatural forms were the cylindrical chimneys

of Argenteuil's factories, which Monet silhouettes against

the sky like the stakes in the vineyards. Their difference from

the natural landscape is declared not only by their unadorned

shapes but also by their undisguised activity, as dark trails

of gray smoke spewing from two of them are blown across

the scene, their undulations contrasting with the blotchy

clouds beyond.

Argenteuil had made a conscious decision to attract businesses to its shores and establish itself as a vital commercial

center. And it had enjoyed impressive success. With the sailboats, sculls, and steamboats came industries large and small:

boat builders, tanneries, distilleries, chemical plants, iron

forges. The most significant was the Joly iron works in the

center of town. It was founded in 1823 by Pierre Joly, with

two employees making iron railings and tools. By 1863 it had

grown to be one of the major iron fabricators in France,

employing more than three hundred people and producing

enormous iron forms, such as bridge trestles and elements for

the largest iron building in France: Les Halles, the central

food market in the heart of Paris.

Argenteuil's municipal council did not try to limit development by designating separate parts of the town as industrial

zones. Eager to have new businesses and to broaden its tax

base, it granted permits for construction wherever there was

space, even if that meant in residential areas, to the occasional

displeasure of neighbors. With land values in Argenteuil only

a fraction of those in Paris, developers and entrepreneurs

were happy to invest in the suburb. Most people saw all this

Fig. ¡o. Advertisement for the Moulin d'Orgemont café and

restaurant. Musée du Vieil Argenteuil

Fig. 11. Claude Monet, The Path through the Vineyards,

1872, oil on canvas, Private Collection, Europe

Fig. i2. Gustave Caillebotte, The Seine at the Epinay Point, c. 1888,

oil on canvas, Private Collection

On Place and Meaning 1

9
development as a positive force. It was a way for the town,

having languished as a quiet agrarian village for centuries,

to assume a leadership position, maximize its land and resources, and ensure prosperity for subsequent generations.

People also recognized that industrialization, though still in

its infancy, would be the wave of the future, and if the community were to remain vibrant and competitive, it needed to

harness the power of this new beast.

Although not every municipality was as aggressive as

Argenteuil, the growth of industry in the Paris suburbs in the

second half of the nineteenth century was the most significant

factor in the region's transformation. Popular illustrators

and guidebooks—in fact, the mass media in general—

embraced this change with supportive articles and startling

images (fig. 13). The countryside in this view seems to have

been completely overrun by industry, the skies prodded by

factory chimneys belching smoke, the tillable land pushed

aside by the onrushing railroad.

This was not to everyone's liking. Gustave Flaubert's

Paris clerks Bouvard and Pécuchet, from his novel of the

same name, set out to look for a house in the country after

one received a handsome inheritance. They searched "everywhere in the vicinity of Paris, from Amiens to Evreux, from

Fontainebleau to Le Havre," yet "still found nothing." Like

many of their contemporaries in the 18705, when Flaubert

wrote his book, "they wanted to be away from other houses,"

but they hesitated to buy a place "too exposed to winds from

the sea, or too near some factory, or too inaccessible." They

ended up far from Paris in unadulterated countryside

between Caen and Falaise. Their fundamental problem was

not the elusiveness of an ideal, or the fickleness of individual

taste, or the inability to make a decision, but the desire to

escape the pervasive changes occurring in France, especially

in the Paris region. The result was they had to move a great

distance from the capital. As Zola emphasized in each of his

novels, Paris was the biggest, most aggressive, most creative

force in France. Developments there inevitably overflowed its

boundaries to affect the surrounding countryside—for better

or for worse.

For all its ingenuity, appetite, and zeal, however, the

capital could not have transformed the area as rapidly as it did

if it had not been for the invention of the railroad. Trains

transported people and products as well as ideas and political

power, and they did so, as Zola described in La Bête humaine

in 1890, like "a gigantic creature lying across the land, with its

head in Paris and joints all over the line." What Zola called

Fig. 13. "Saint-Denis Station," from Adolphe Joanne, Les Environs de Paris (1856), 405
this "sovereign beauty of metal beings" was directly responsible for the changes that the impressionists confronted in

Argenteuil.9 The Chemin de fer de l'Ouest, which laid the

first railroad in France in 1838 (from Paris to Saint-Germain),

extended the line in 1851 to the banks of the Seine across from

Argenteuil; in 1863 ^ built a bridge over the river and

brought the train straight into town, thus linking it with the

capital and with a destiny that prompted the local newspaper

in 1862 to assert: "If we do not paralyze its tendencies and

direction, Argenteuil, by its situation and proximity to Paris,

should become a populated and important city."10 Whether

one agreed or not, it was clear that once the bridge was raised

the town would never be the same.

When Monet moved to Argenteuil in 1871, initiating one

of the most fertile periods in his career, he made a definite

choice to live among its mélange of fields and factories,

picturesque streets and rumbling trains, bourgeois pleasure

seekers and blue-vested workers. Of the towns in which he

had lived and worked in the i86os, none was affected by the

Industrial Revolution to the same degree as Argenteuil. In

fact Sèvres, Bonnières, and Saint-Michel have managed to

maintain their suburban allure to this day. Argenteuil, by

contrast, was willing to gamble its bucolic past on what it perceived to be a brighter, grander future.

The story of the years that Monet and his friends spent in

the community, therefore, is the story of their attempt to come

to terms with this decision and its consequences and to translate

what they saw and felt into visual form. It was an evolving

relationship, one that seemed coordinated with their commitment to render the contemporary world with all its wonders

and novelties, contradictions and ambiguities. As Zola noted

when these artists were emerging in the i86os: "They interpret their epoch as men who live in it. Their works are alive

because their subjects are taken from life and are painted with

all the love that the artists have for modernity."" Argenteuil

was thus the ideal place for them, at least for a while.

Site and Style: Argenteuil and Barbizon

Argenteuil's appeal to the impressionists derived mostly

from its diversity, which offered something for everyone.

Depending on where one looked, the town could be charmingly historical or glaringly contemporary, delightfully rustic

or unnervingly progressive. Monet encountered these contrasts on a daily basis. Directly across the street from his house

on the rue Pierre Guienne (his first residence in Argenteuil)

stood an impressive eighteenth-century building that served

as the town hospice. When he walked out his front door, he

could see the newly renovated Boulevard Héloïse, the

Champs de Mars, and the promenade to the right. If he

turned to his left, he could see the railroad station and several

factories, beyond which stretched residential streets that led

to the vineyards and the Orgemont hill with its windmillrestaurant. Everything was within walking distance, as the

ads for the Orgemont restaurant assured potential patrons

(fig. 10). Argenteuil was thus not only diverse, it was also

malleable and alive.

In that regard, the town could not have been more different

than its most famous predecessor in the history of art, the village

of Barbizon, which lay about sixty kilometers south of Paris,

at the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. Like Argenteuil,

Barbizon had attracted a band of adventurous artists—

Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Charles Jacques,

and Jules Dupré—all of whom, like the impressionists, had

escaped the city for the country, albeit some of them just for

summers twenty years earlier. But Barbizon was a poor, rural,

farming village that had not changed in centuries. Its modest

stone houses and traditional agrarian practices were tangible

evidence of how the past had endured, unaltered and unheralded. Industry and pleasurable pastimes had no place or

meaning, nor did notions of invention and advancement.

Barbizon was caught in a time warp that made it homogeneous

and earthbound, qualities that its dry, flat, windswept fields

tended to reinforce. Although it was linked to Paris by stagecoach, the railroad never came; even today, one has to drive

to get there.

The art that Barbizon yielded was therefore very different

from what the impressionists plumbed from Argenteuil.

Paintings by Millet and his confreres took rural traditions for

their subjects, notably peasants and shepherds, goat herders

and cow tenders, engaged in time-honored routines. Their

solemn, heartfelt, carefully wrought views are accompanied

by homages to the meticulously worked fields of Barbizon

and to the many faces of nature that the region revealed.

Most poetic perhaps is the attention paid to small delights—

chickens in winter, ducks in summer, cows being milked,

primroses in bloom—as if the medieval glories of the Très

riches heures of the duc de Berry were alive and well and

worth recalling.

These paintings were radical for their time because they

focused on humble matter and raised individuals from the

lower class to heights traditionally reserved for noble figures

from history, religion, or mythology. As such, they prepared

the way for the more confrontational art of the impressionists.

But Barbizon pictures differ from works of the impressionists

at Argenteuil not only in subject, feeling, and orientation but

in craft, emphasis, and style.

Barbizon artists worked from dark to light, building up

their forms gradually with modulated tonalities so that the

illusion of three-dimensionality was achieved by rigorously

maintained relationships among the inherent values of their

colors. Touch was equally controlled—no swirls of the brush,

no virtuoso performances. Moreover, in keeping with the

hard-won existence of their subjects, Millet and his followers

used their medium sparingly. They were sensitive colorists,
able to detect the subtle range of hues that nature offered

them. Their pigments were restrained, bound by a preference

for earth tones and the sober side of the spectrum. Millet and

his followers primed their canvases with muted colors as well,

taking their cue from their sites and subjects and from more

traditional art.

The impressionists appreciated the ways in which the

Barbizon artists evoked nature's palette, but they felt no need

to contain their enthusiasm for its glories and vitality. Monet

and his colleagues lathered their canvases with rich, thick pigments, as if impelled by their own gusto and self-confidence.

Like their more assertive middle-class subjects, they appeared

unconcerned about the cost of such excess, or about its flashiness and suggestions of hedonism. They did not want to

temper their color, because for them color was the physical

embodiment of light. Their interest in capturing natural

effects as accurately as possible inspired them to use pigments

with a freedom that approximated nature's own. Their keen

desire to make their pictures equivalents to contemporary

existence led them to invest color with the abandonment and

unpredictability of the modern world.

This also meant that elements in impressionist paintings

did not have to conform to inherited expectations and be held

in predictable compositional hierarchies. In Barbizon, traditions were so continuous and omnipresent that the artists who.

went there to record its way of life naturally organized their

subjects in a manner that reinforced their internal logic.

Argenteuil, caught in the throes of change—indeed defined

by the raucous conjunction of old and new, the discarded and

the reformulated—contained within its constructs an order

that was entirely new. It depended on mobility and openmindedness as opposed to Barbizon's stability and single

focus; it welcomed inconsistency and clutter, ambiguity and

unease, as qualities to exploit, not difficulties to be avoided.

While working in Argenteuil the impressionists therefore invented or appropriated unanticipated strategies for

organizing forms, with bridges shooting into their scenes at

dramatic angles and sailboat masts jutting upward from

unseen sources outside the picture (cat. 28). It was an ingenious

way to express the dynamics of the place and make sense out of

what could otherwise seem messy and meaningless. Barbizon,

with its clarity and simplicity, was more easily apprehended.

Argenteuil, with its mix of the engineered and the inconstant,

was more demanding. It was in tune with the times, however,

which may be one reason Monet found it attractive and may

explain why it provoked such novel, robust, idiosyncratic

reactions among its impressionist visitors.

Like Barbizon, Argenteuil gave deep pleasure and satisfaction to the artists who worked there, particularly

Monet and Caillebotte, who stayed the longest. In part, these

rewards were the product of the town's physical appeal

and the ways its offerings met the demands of the

new avant-garde. Barbizon artists would have been lost in

Argenteuil's contradictions, whereas the impressionists

viewed these contradictions as challenges, the most significant

of which entailed transforming the complex into the comprehensible. Building on their initiatives of the i86os, they were

able to devise a vocabulary when working in Argenteuil that

matched that of their subject or at least approximated the

varied qualities of the areas of town that they chose to paint.

Their broken brushwork, irregular surfaces, heightened

color, and sense of fleeting impressions were not merely formal innovations to undermine the status quo of the profession

or demonstrate personal virtuosity. Like their choices of what

to paint and the compositional tactics employed to organize

those choices, these formal elements acted as bearers of meaning. They were at once evidence of the artists' distinct personalities and testimony to the ties that bound them as a group.

They were also the physical proof of the artists' engagement

with the moment and their desire to give readable form to

Argenteuil's amorphous character.

Another challenge concerned their willingness to put

individual differences aside and constitute themselves as a

legal entrepreneurial entity. This proved more difficult in

practice than in intention. The artists were divided as to what

model to follow, what specific statutes should bind them,

what financial commitments each should make, who should

be invited to join, and so on. These issues often caused discontent, revealing the political and social stances that

separated them as well as the biases they held about other

potential members. Many of these differences, especially the

last, plagued their attempts to mount exhibitions, which

was their primary reason for forming an association. The

so-called first impressionist exhibition of 1874 contained as

many works by mainstream artists as by those who would

become known as impressionists.

Resolving these issues was no easy matter at any point

during the twelve years of their informal union. Initially

it required the leadership of Monet and Pissarro, who negotiated compromises, raised funds, and exercised sufficient

diplomacy to produce a document they all could sign. Begun

in early 1873 (Monet first mentions it in a letter to Pissarro in

April of that year), the process took nearly ten months.12

Significantly, many of the meetings were conducted not in

Paris, where most of the artists lived, but in Monet's house in

Argenteuil, to which everyone had to travel. The symbolism

of this could not have escaped the organizers: Paris was

the focus of their attention and the projected site for their

activities as a collective, but this awkward emerging suburb

was the planning center for what they hoped would be a

dynamic new force in the nation's art. That it would originate

outside the capital, in a town that was itself trying to assume

a leadership role in the region, seems strikingly appropriate.

The group apparently agreed, as its preliminary plans

were announced from Monet's living room. The press release

came in the form of a letter dated 7 May 1873, which Monet

wrote to Paul Alexis, the art critic for L'Avenir National.

Alexis had just published an article suggesting that artists
should unite to create syndicates so that they could stage

independent exhibitions. Monet's response had to have been

penned with the blessings of the soon-to-be-called impressionists. "A group of painters assembled in my home," Monet

wrote, "has read with pleasure the article which you have

published in L'Avenir National. We are happy to see you

defend ideas which are ours too, and we hope that, as you say,

L'Avenir National will kindly give us assistance when the society

which we are about to form will be completely constituted."13

Alexis took the liberty of noting that "several artists

of great merit" had stepped forward to join this group,

including Béliard, Gautier, Guillaumin, Jongkind, Pissarro,

and Sisley: "The painters, most of whom have previously

exhibited, belong to that group of naturalists which has

the right ambition of painting nature and life in their large

reality. Their association, however, will not be just a small

clique. They intend to represent, interests, not tendencies,

and hope for the adhesion of all serious artists.'"4

By the end of the year they had gathered such avantgarde artists—except for Manet—and four months later had

mounted their first independent exhibition. One of the most

significant moments in the history of French modernism thus

belongs in many ways not to the trumpeted capital, as Zola

might have wanted, nor to the fields of Barbizon, as Millet

and his companions may have envisioned, but to Argenteuil

and this contentious group of roughly thirty-year-old painters

who gathered to endorse the notions of modernity and change

as unifying principles, much as the town itself had.

On Individuality and the Collective

What struck many who saw the first exhibition is what still

astonishes people today: namely, the shared interests and

stylistic similarities of the core group of impressionists. "To

paint what they see, to reproduce nature without interpreting

it, and without arranging it, seems to be the goal of these

artists of the boulevard des Capucines," remarked one critic

after viewing the show.'5 So strongly have these ideas been

stamped on the history of the movement and instilled in the

interested public that one somewhat dazzled observer at a

recent exhibition of impressionist paintings that ended with

a suite of Monet's Meules proclaimed to a companion,

"Oh look! They all did haystacks too."

This visitor most likely would not have been caught in

such confusion if transported to the early 18905 when Monet

completed his stack series; by then the impressionists were

painting pictures quite different from one another's. But it

might have been possible to mistake a canvas by Monet for

one by Renoir at the end of the i86os, when the two worked

together at La Grenouillère; and it certainly would have been

the case in the following decade at Argenteuil. Time and

again in the 1870$ Monet stood side by side with one of his

artist friends rendering the same scene: the Boulevard Héloïse

(cats. 4, 5), a regatta on the Seine (cats. 30, 31), the boat basin

with sailboats and sculls (cats. 32, 33), the railroad bridge, and

the Petit Bras of the Seine. Sisley was the first to join Monet in

Argenteuil, and they initiated this custom; Monet and Renoir,

the second to visit, soon followed suit. Manet worked beside

Renoir once, both of them painting Monet's wife Camille and

son Jean in Monet's backyard (see cat. 21).

The impressionists also produced many pictures of each

other during their stays with Monet. Renoir sketched or

painted his host four times and Camille as many (see cats. 15,

16, 19, 21); Manet did two portraits of Monet painting in his

studio boat with Camille at his side (cat. 39 and fig. 20) as well

as the one of the whole family; Monet painted at least one

image of Manet working in the garden. This habit not

only deepened their friendships and avoided the expense of

models, it encouraged them to support one another in the face

of the challenges they had so ambitiously posed for themselves. In the process they were able to fulfill their equally

important aim to base art on life, and as an added benefit, they

could elevate themselves and their practice to a level of

significance that affirmed their claims to history.

Although painting together required an open mind and

a healthy combination of tolerance and trust, it offered a

unique opportunity for mutual inquiry, for sharing information, observations, and technical tricks. The impressionists

had learned the advantages of this practice as students in the

i86os, when they had worked together in Charles Gleyre's

studio or on painting excursions to the suburbs and beyond.

Monet was especially enthusiastic about the rewards, as he

explained to Frédéric Bazille in 1864: "There are a lot of us at

the moment in Honfleur....Boudin and Jongkind are here; we

are getting on marvelously. I regret very much that you aren't

here, because in such company there's a lot to be learned and

nature begins to grow beautiful.""

Students usually abandoned this exercise when they left

their master's studio and became professional artists. The

impressionists did not. It was as if they were perennial

students, with a curiosity that could not be satisfied by traditional rites of passage. They did not discount the value of

working in isolation. After Boudin left Honfleur in the fall

of 1864, for example, Monet wrote his mentor "I am quite

alone at the present, and frankly I work all the better for it.'"7

But he knew he still had much to learn, writing in the abovecited letter to Bazille in the summer of 1864 "There are some

things that one cannot fathom fwhenj all alone," things

that have to do with "what one sees and what one understands." It was not a question of perfecting technical aspects

of their craft to get them right—a problem that haunted

Zola's Claude Lantier—but of continuing to paint. It was

work as process and discovery more than work as producing

a product. The impressionists did not scrape down their

canvases in the 18705 every time things went badly, as Zola's

On Place and Meaning 2

3
hero did continually (to the point that he was never able to

finish his masterpiece and, in frustration, hanged himself in

his studio in front of his failed picture).

To be sure, the impressionists were concerned about how

their paintings looked and had many discouraging moments,

particularly in the i86os when they too "struggled, scraped

off, and began again," as Monet admitted to Bazille.1 But

they had to earn a living, and by the 18705 they had become

enormously proficient and were willing to set things down

without working and reworking them. They were not aiming to achieve a finite goal or create an ideal—the perfect

sunset, the most novel figurai arrangement, the most brilliant

light effect. If that occurred, it was a bonus, but the norms

and hierarchies that ruled the art of their time were neither

the beginning nor the end of their efforts. As Zola made clear,

they drew their art from life and from the endlessly fascinating drama of nature. That afforded them great flexibility and

allowed them to worry less about producing a masterpiece

than about building a body of work that had the integrity and

significance befitting their subjects.

By placing shared goals above individual differences and

common concerns before personal gains, the impressionists

contradicted contemporary expectations. That is in part why

visitors to their first exhibition, held in the vacated studios of

the notorious Paris photographer Nadar, were so surprised

by what they saw. No jury had decided what would be in

the show; that was the prerogative of the participants. After

paying sixty francs, each had the right to submit two works,

neither of which would be rejected. (Everyone ignored this

ratio and included more than two without extra charge.)

A lottery was used to determine the way the paintings were

hung in the exhibition. Ten percent of any sales would be

applied toward the show's operating budget. No one was

competing for prizes or awards; there were none to give out.

Leveling the competition to stimulate a sense of the communal ran the risk of suppressing individuality, but the

united front established by this strategy had considerable

value. The impressionists were attempting to lay siege to a

monolithic system of making and marketing works of art,

controlled by the national Salons; no one person or painting

could accomplish the task alone. Most of the critics who

reviewed the exhibition in 1874 recognized this; several

praised the initiative, though they did not like the art.'9

The idea for this assault on the Salon and the powers of

central authority arose in the i86os, largely from Monet,

although he had plenty of input from his friends. The first

stirrings of rebellion had not borne fruit, for a variety of

reasons: money, timing, personal distractions, and an underlying urge to succeed at the Salon. When Monet returned

to France in 1871, the country's dual disasters of the FrancoPrussian War and the Commune insurrection made any

immediate action impossible. But he continued to nurture the

idea and acted on it in his first two years in Argenteuil with

unprecedented conviction and a few sly maneuvers.

Initially, he did what was most important; he continued

to create paintings. In fact he worked as never before. In 1872

he completed more than sixty canvases (an average of one

every six days), exceeding his total output for the previous two

years combined. The results included still lifes, portraits, garden

and boating scenes, views of smoking factories, suburban

streets, clipper ships, bridges over the Seine—more settings

and subjects than any group of pictures he had produced in

any previous year of his career. He was evidently stimulated

not only by the prospect of an independent exhibition but by

his new locale and its many possibilities. He was also thrilled

to be back in France, which "still has many beautiful things to

paint," as he told Pissarro while in Holland on his way home.20

Monet may likewise have been responding to the keen

interest in his work that the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had

shown. Durand-Ruel had been the premier representative of

Barbizon art in France and had a huge stock of paintings by

Millet, Rousseau, and others. During the Franco-Prussian

War he too had left France for England, where he met Monet

through Charles Daubigny, who had also gone into selfimposed exile there. Impressed with the young artist,

Durand-Ruel included one of Monet's paintings in a show he

staged to inaugurate a new gallery he was opening on Bond

Street in December 1870. In 1872 he bought twenty-nine

more, paying Monet the handsome sum of 9,880 francs; in

1873 he bought another thirty-four, for 19,100 francs. Life

was good for the emerging painter; doctors and lawyers in

Paris at the time made only 9,000 to 10,000 francs a year.21

Although the economy retreated in 1874—which prevented Durand-Ruel from buying any more paintings from

Monet for nearly ten years—the dealer's first buying spree,

coupled with other sales Monet was able to conclude in late 1872

and early 1873, must have led the artist to believe that the time

was right to plan an independent group exhibition. It cost him

dearly in terms of his art, however: he spent so much time writing letters, fundraising, and traveling to see potential group

members in 1873

 tnat ne

 produced only thirty pictures, compared with sixty the year before. Monet was willing to make

serious personal sacrifices to realize his goals, even soliciting

money from people he hardly knew, although he told Pissarro

"it is very difficult to ask people about this who don't know

you, especially those who are not sympathetic to the cause."22

His enthusiasm for the project was undoubtedly heightened when his friends came to Argenteuil and painted

alongside him. That was the raison d'être of this new group:

working together to achieve larger purposes. On Sisley's visit

in 1872, he and Monet both did paintings of the Boulevard

Héloïse, the Grande Rue, the Petit Bras of the Seine, and the

Rue de la Chaussée. The Petit Bras proved to be one of

Monet's favorite places; he depicted it nine times during

his first year in Argenteuil and nearly a dozen more thereafter (Renoir and Caillebotte also painted there on many

occasions). But Monet never returned to the other three sites,

nor did any of his other visitors.

2

4

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Another attraction for all of the artists working in

Argenteuil was the boat basin of the Seine. Among the liveliest areas of town, it captured the attention of anyone who was

interested in the range of modern leisure activities the town

offered, as the impressionists were. Many paintings by Monet

and his friends are closely related by virtue of their focus

on this place. Because only a few can be accurately dated,

however, it is impossible to know whether certain canvases by

one artist were done at the same time as similar paintings by

another. Thus it is impossible to determine if they are the

product of a conscious decision to work together or if they

merely reflect the general appeal of the site.

Some paintings are undeniable pairs or pendants. In

addition to the four executed by Monet and Sisley in 1872,

there are at least five by Monet and Renoir: two from 1873;

three from 1874, including a regatta scene (cats. 30, 31) and

one of the most often reproduced and thus most celebrated of

all such pairs, Sailboats at Argenteuil (cats. 32, 33). The only

other paintings by Renoir that can be attributed to these two

campaigns in Argenteuil are portraits of Monet, Camille, and

Jean, which suggests that his working time in the town was

spent exclusively with his hosts. The notion of the communal

could not be more purely exemplified.

One portrait Renoir painted of Monet in 1873 was a sympathetic evocation of their shared aesthetic (cat. 19). He shows

his friend as the emblematic impressionist, confident and

engaged, painting outdoors in front of his motif in accordance

with the long tradition of plein-air artists. So common was this

practice in the nineteenth century it was even caricatured by

a popular illustrator for a satirical Paris weekly (fig. 14). Of the

many images Renoir may have had in mind when he began

this picture, two provide salient contrasts. One was a slightly

earlier portrait he had done of Monet in a more contemplative

pose, reading a book and smoking his pipe (cat. 15). In many

ways these are pendants, one depicting Monet as a thinker,

the other as a doer; one as pyramidal, central, filling the scene;

and the other vertical, pushed to one side, made modest by his

surroundings. Renoir may also have been recalling a painting

for which he and Monet posed: Fantin-Latour's monumental

canvas A Studio in the Batignolles of 1870 (fig. 15). Renoir

stands in the middle looking down, his head surrounded by

the gold frame on the wall; Monet looks out from the right,

squeezed in behind the aristocratic Bazille. Aside from

Manet, who is the focus of the group's homage, the rest are

writers and critics, including Zola, who stands behind Renoir.

No one but Manet holds a brush or gives any indication of

being an artist; they are present to look, learn, and pay

court—as caricaturists took pains to point out when the picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1870 (fig. 16). In Monet

Painting in His Argenteuil Garden (cat. 19) Renoir reverses

almost everything. Monet stands outdoors instead of sitting in

a studio, working alone instead of surrounded by a coterie of

admirers, immersed in the contemporary world and his

painting instead of looking stiffly out at us. Most important, it

Fig. 14. F. Rossa, cartoon of Sunday painters, Le Journal amusant

Fig. 15. Henri Fantin-Latour, A Studio in the Batignolles, 1870,

oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Fig. 16. Bertall (Charles Albert d'Arnoux), "Jesus Painting among

His Disciples," or "The Divine School of Manet. A Religious Picture

by Fantin-Latour," Le Journal amusant (21 May 1870), 4

On Place and Meaning 2

5

(4 September 1869)
is Monet rather than Manet who is being honored—a changing of the guard that Manet himself soon recognized.

In the summer of 1874, a month or two after the close of the

inaugural exhibition by the "Société anonyme," Manet came to

Argenteuil to work for the first time. Perhaps he was inspired

by the exhibition. Perhaps he was impressed with the publicity

it received, most of which was positive, though there were some

bitter blasts from conservatives. Perhaps he also recognized

that canvases like his Salon submission of 1873, Le Bon Boc/(

(fig. 17), would no longer hold his position at the forefront of

the avant-garde. His remake of Frans Hals was impressive as

a bit of painting, but its ties to the past, in style as well as

subject, were obvious, and its color scheme was closely linked

to the limited palette of his seventeenth-century model.

As even the most conservative critics in 1874 recognized,

there was no denying the novelty of the impressionists' style,

especially their color combinations and sense of light. Both

were daring and more intimately tied to nature than Manet's

at that time. There was likewise no doubt about the power of

the artists' convictions. Manet may also have been attracted to

the potential of their communal assault on the Salon system,

but he could not get over his distrust of their entrepreneurial

methods and continued to submit pictures only to the statesponsored exhibitions. Despite this disagreement, Manet

dropped his resistance to the group and ventured out of Paris

to join Monet at Argenteuil in July 1874.

Manet's move was symbolic as well as practical: the older

artist coming to learn from his junior (by nine years); the

quintessential Parisian bowing to the suburbs; the sophisticate

acquiescing to solecism. Monet did not reciprocate; he did not

take the train to Paris to work with Manet in the city, a fact

that underscores their reversed positions and the significance

of painting in Argenteuil. Although the town had been only

modestly represented in the first impressionist show (Monet

decided to exhibit a range of work, including more pastels

than paintings), Manet certainly knew that Argenteuil had

been critical to the realization of the group and the exhibition.

He was also aware that it had the ingredients for the making

of modern art. He had visited there on occasion, and he

owned Sisley's Bridge at Argenteuil (cat. 9) as well as one of

Monet's first paintings of the town, a view of the highway

bridge, both of which he bought in 1872.

It is impossible to know the precise order of the works

Manet began that summer in Argenteuil, but as Robert

Herbert has suggested, the three with simpler compositions,

palettes, and light effects probably came first. They include

The Seine at Argenteuil, Boating, and Sailboats at Argenteuil

(see cats. 35, 40).23 In the second group—Argenteuil and

Claude Monet in His Studio Boat (figs. 19, 20)—his palette

lightens, his sense of sunlight becomes more acute, and his

touch regains some of its virtuosity, as if he were now more

comfortable rendering the natural effects of the moment he

had chosen to paint. All of his canvases, except for a view of

Monet and his family in their backyard (see cat. 21) and

Fig. 17. Edouard Manet, Le Bon Boc/(, 1873,

oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art,

Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson Collection

Fig. 18. Edouard Manet, Le Gare Saint-Lazare, 1873,

oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother,

Louisine W. Havemeyer
Boating, with its indefinite setting, were done at various

points along the Petit Gennevilliers side of the Seine, looking

across the water to Argenteuil.

More than any of his contemporaries, Manet did not leave

his urban sensibilities behind in Paris when he boarded

the train to Argenteuil. Each painting he began there bears

the stamp of city living and the experience of the capital's

grandes boulevards. In Boating, for example, the man and

woman seem completely indifferent to us and to each other,

although the skipper stares at us directly while furtively

touching his companion's foot with his own. The boat is startlingly close, like a vehicle rushing by on a Paris street, an

effect achieved by the radical cropping of the craft and the

flattened body of water in the background. It is apparent

from their stylish attire that these are not local residents of

Argenteuil but Parisians out for a fling in the country.

The same urban disjuncture informs Manet's Seine at

Argenteuil (cat. 35), where we meet two smartly dressed

figures that seem out of place as they stand alone on the

deserted shore. With their backs to us, they appear to be

in their own worlds. They are not engaged in any mutual

activity; we cannot see if they are holding hands. As such, they

are the suburban equivalents to the two figures in Manet's

Gare Saint-Lazare of the previous year (fig. 18). In that distinctly Parisian scene, the young woman looks up at us with

the blank stare of urban disinterest. The child is even more

aloof, turning her back on us to peer through the iron bars of

a fence, her body metaphorically surrounded by the steam

from the engines coming and going from one of the capital's busiest railroad stations—the same one that served

Argenteuil. The Seine at Argenteuil has a more readable and

pastoral background, but this stretch of the river is occupied

only by unmanned boats with masts that suggest a more

casual, suburban echo of the bars of the Saint-Lazare fence.

Both paintings share a lurking emptiness, as if the alienation

that Paris instilled in its residents has seeped into each scene,

although one was far from the heart of the capital.

Manet complicates these effects even more in Argenteuil

(fig. 19), a picture he felt so strongly about that he selected

it to be his only submission to the Salon of 1875. His sentiments were entirely justified, as the painting was conceived

and executed with beguiling aplomb. Depicting two sporty

figures seated on a dock in front of the Argenteuil boat basin,

it contains an array of masterful ploys and enigmas. The

man and woman seem at ease. They are cousins of the couple

in Boating: ordinary and self-absorbed. Although she meets

our eye, he does not respond to our inquiring glance. Behind

them lie jostling boats whose masts and rigging add dramatic

tension to the composition. Stretching and compressing the

space, the nautical parts play games with the figures as well as

with the viewer.

The bowsprit of a black-hulled boat in the middle distance on the left, for example, appears to poke the woman

in the ear, while the man's hat aligns with a sail on the right

Fig. 19. Edouard Mânct, Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas,

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai

that seems to extend to the far bank and end just where a

smokestack rises. The woman sits near a forceful mast on

the left whose halyards descend to her shoulder. A similar

cord cuts an opposing triangle on the right side that also points

to the man's shoulder. In other cunning notes, the boats behind the figures both have peachy beige parts but contrasting hulls—one black, the other white—while the furled

sail behind the man is hiked up to reveal the boom. (A painting by Monet that includes the same boat [fig. 21] suggests

that the sail was simply left this way.) Manet makes sure that

the relationship between the figures remains ambiguous.

The man holds his companion's parasol so that it ends

provocatively at her midriff, while she holds a bunch of

flowers in her lap. More curious, his right hand must be on

the very edge of the railing or under the woman's posterior.

In either case, it is suggestive, as is the Freudian presence of

the mast on the left and the can-can performance of the sail

on the right.

Unlike the pairs of paintings that Monet and Renoir

produced in the same summer of 1874, Manet's stubbornly

resistant picture resembles no canvas by any of his compatriots. Unlike Renoir and Sisley, Manet very rarely worked

shoulder to shoulder with fellow artists. Although he did

On Place and Meaning 2

7
portraits of artist friends and held forth in their café gatherings in the i86os, he generally painted in the privacy of

his studio. But his pictures after 1874 were affected by

the impressionists' novel strategies. They moved closer to the

communal than Manet had been wont to go, and they represented a distinct break from his previous work. In a dramatic

role reversal, Manet was in Argenteuil as a student—at least

in terms of plein-air painting, since that had not been a

consistent part of his oeuvre in the i86os.

Manet basically admits this in two revealing images from

the summer of 1874, views of Claude Monet in his studio boat

(cat. 39 and fig. 20). These are the aquatic versions of Renoir's

portrait of Monet painting in his garden (cat. 19), as they too

pay homage to the central artist of the moment. The finished

canvas shows Monet nattily dressed, feet up, working under

the handsome striped awning of his floating atelier, while

Camille sits inside the light-filled cabin like his muse, adding

intimacy to what would otherwise be a scene of insistent

anonymity. Pleasure boats move across the water or bob

at anchor, factory chimneys belch brown smoke, and light

flickers on the surface of the river, but nowhere are other

human beings to be seen. Isolated, though not completely

alone, Monet is the ultimate contemporary plein-air master,

right in the middle of a shifting world, confidently translating

his immediate sensations into the permanence of paint.

As Robert Herbert has noted, Manet shows Monet painting a canvas that actually exists. On his easel sits his Sailboats

on the Seine of 1874 (fig-

 2I)> as ls evident from the tree and the

triangle of land on the left and the agitated group of boats on

the right. Manet not only fully understood the practice of his

plein-air partner but took the concept of working side by side

to produce similar pictures one inventive step further. When

Monet's riverscape is set alongside Manet's portrait of his

friend, it is apparent that the two artists were painting the

same scene: the tree and orange-roofed houses on the left;

the black-hulled boat by the shore; the white one with the

furled sail to the right; the factories puffing smoke. The large

white sail that appears immediately to the left of center

in Monet's composition peeks over the roof of the studio

boat in Manet's view. These are therefore just like the pairs of

pictures Renoir and Sisley made with Monet. From the way

Manet has captured Monet's position in the boat, we can see

that he, like his colleagues, was at his friend's side, albeit from

a distance, probably from a nearby dock. But of course Monet,

dashing in his black tie and yellow pants, now occupies pride

of place; it is Manet the accomplished student who looks over

his teacher's shoulder, as Monet and his friends had looked

over Manet's shoulder in Fantin's earlier portrait. Manet was

not known for his humility, which makes Claude Monet in His

Studio Boat an even more significant tribute to the younger

artist, the kind of endorsement Zola's Lantier so desperately

sought. It also points out how the individual and the communal could be compatible and how two paintings could be

the same and yet different.

Fig. 20. Edouard Manet, Claude Monet in His Studio Boat, 1874,

oil on canvas, Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Fig. 2i. Claude Monet, Sailboats on the Seine, Argenteuil,

1874, oil on canvas, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco,

Gift of Bruno and Sadie Adriani

28 
This notion is borne out by several other examples:

Sisley's and Monet's versions of the Boulevard Héloïse

(cats. 4, 5), or Monet's and Caillebotte's renderings of the Petit

Bras (cats. 50, 51). The idea may be less obvious in other pairs,

but the more they are studied, the more their differences

equal or even outweigh their similarities. Renoir's view of a

regatta shares the same vantage as Monet's (cats. 30, 31) and

includes most of the same elements, but Monet's touch is more

consistent, his sailboats more readable, and the whole more

thinly rendered. The two artists' canvases of boaters at

Argenteuil (cats. 32, 33) differ in myriad details—sculls

appear in Monet's but not in Renoir's; Monet includes fewer

sailboats than does Renoir; the two figures in each are disposed differently—to say nothing of the varied, feathery

touch that is unique to Renoir.24 For all their proximity and

shared concerns, none of these pictures looks exactly like

its mate, underscoring the critical role each painter and his

particular personality played in determining the final outcome of his work.

Notably absent from these comparisons are Pissarro

and Cézanne, the two members of the group most likely

to have painted in Argenteuil, given their penchant for

landscape. Neither produced any work there, despite several

visits, apparently finding it incompatible with his interests.

Probably neither could bear the essentially bourgeois character of Argenteuil, with its pleasure boats and holiday

interlopers, its regattas and new houses for commuters.

Pissarro was more inclined to paint humble country folk and

rural sites that bore little evidence of the march of progress.

Cézanne was less interested than Pissarro in social issues but

shared his mentor's love of "the magnificent richness...that

animates nature," as Cézanne admitted to his son late in life.25

For the other impressionists, such sentiments smacked of

Barbizon-like romance and thus of the past. Advanced painting, to them, lay not in undisturbed nature or in the lovingly

tended cabbage patches of Pissarro's backyard, but in the

stresses and strains of a world in flux. In due course they

would change their minds, but in the 18705 that was their

conviction. And few places seemed more kindred or challenging than Monet's adopted home of Argenteuil.

Truth and Verisimilitude

In the summer of 1864 Monet informed Bazille that he was

convinced one could accomplish the seemingly impossible

task of translating onto canvas "what one sees and what one

understands...on the strength of observation and reflection."2'

Such assertions, revealing an equal measure of confidence and

naïveté, can be attributed in part to Monet's youthful ambition

and inexperience: he was only twenty-three years old and had

not even submitted a painting to the Salon. Less than two

decades later, humbled by his struggles before nature, he

would dwell on the difficulties he encountered translating his

sensations into art. Richard Shiff has laid out the practical and

theoretical dimensions of this dialectic—between seeking

and finding, looking and knowing—in late nineteenth

century avant-garde painting and has illuminated many of

its problems.27 As he points out, no artist, Monet included,

thought the program was simplistic or easily realized. "It is

indeed frightfully difficult to make a thing complete in all

aspects," Monet conceded to Bazille in 1864. But he was sure

he was up to the task: "I have such a desire to do everything,

my head is bursting."

He had lost none of his verve when he took up his palette

and brushes in Argenteuil, as his productivity alone attests.

Although he left no written statements about his agenda in

the 18705, it is clear from the staggering number of canvases he

completed during the decade and the range of subjects he

depicted that he believed he was successfully finding a way to

translate what he saw and understood into art and that

Argenteuil was playing an important role in the process.

These paintings are a personalized but comprehensive

record of Argenteuil's offerings. Though diverse in style and

focus, they confirm Monet's allegiance to the specifics of

the sites he selected to paint. He faithfully recorded their

physical characteristics in a manner that placed him squarely

in the long and distinguished line of view painters. His

impressionist visitors were similarly devoted to topographical

accuracy. Despite the exaggerated color they could all employ

or the breadth of their brush strokes, they, like Courbet, had

vowed to base their art on the factual and observable, the

physical and verifiable. This is what Zola had first found so

attractive about the group, and why Claude Lantier could

declare his belief in an art based on life with such fervor:

"Life! Life! Life! What it is to feel it and paint it as it really

is! To love it for its own sake; to see it as the only true, everlasting, ever-changing beauty, and refuse to see how it might

be 'improved' by being emasculated."28

Embedded in Lantier's declaration is an essential infinitive: "to feel." Feeling is different from seeing, which is

different from understanding, which is different from

the physical act of painting. Thus there is an inherent contradiction in Lantier's avowal, as he is not just documenting

the world around him; he is espousing Zola's fundamental

philosophy—namely, that "art is a corner of nature seen

through a temperament." Monet at twenty-three had more or

less the same attitude, believing he could achieve his goals

through "observation and reflection," through looking and

thinking, inquiry and analysis.

This means that neither the painter nor the author is

a neutral observer, that everything is mediated, whether consciously or not. It is for this reason that Zola could assert

through Lantier with equal steadfastness: "What was Art,

after all, if not simply giving out what you have inside you?

Didn't it all boil down to sticking a female in front of you and

OPld M
painting her as you feel she is? Wasn't a bunch of carrots, yes,

a bunch of carrots, studied directly and painted simply, personally, as you see it yourself, as good as any of the

run-of-the-mill, made-to-measure Ecole des Beaux-Arts stuff,

painted with tobacco-juice? The day was not far off when one

solitary carrot might be pregnant with revolution!"29 Though

overstated for dramatic effect, this belief, shared by each of the

impressionists, allowed for and fundamentally nurtured the

individualism in their collective.

This conviction posed difficulties, however. How could

the impressionists paint pictures and declare them to be true

or accurate? What points of reference were they using—the

view painter's unflinching fidelity to what lay before him, or

the modern painter's interpretive license? If the former, the

painting ran the risk of becoming a mere document, competently done perhaps, but something other than "art." If the

latter, it could easily compromise its relationship to the real

world and descend into personal romance or folly.

The impressionists who worked in Argenteuil resolved

this dilemma by allowing both approaches to coexist. As in

their commingling of differences and similarities and their

conjoining of the individual and the group, they opted not to

choose one over the other. They insisted that their images

maintain a verifiable relationship to the sites depicted, that

major elements not be moved, added, or altered, that anyone

looking at the paintings who might be familiar with the area

be able to determine where the artist had been standing.

As Argenteuil became better known in Paris, this strategy

had several advantages: it tied the impressionists' works more

closely to the contemporary world and gave their motifs

a keen immediacy; it also increased the possibility that someone who knew and liked the place might purchase the

pictures. At the same time, the artists made sure that their

color choices, the amount of paint they used, the way they

applied their medium, and the vantage they assumed, all bore

the mark of their identity, as individuals and as a group.

Truth, therefore, was relative, as it often is, just as accuracy

could be broadly defined. Those who criticized the impressionists for representing "purple trees and skies the color of

fresh butter"30 were missing the point. They were fixated

on reining in the power of painting and making the final

products conform to certain preconceived criteria. The

impressionists wanted to take their craft in the opposite

direction. As Armand Silvestre recognized, "The means by

which they seek their impressions will infinitely serve contemporary art, [because] it is the range of painting's means

that they have restored."3'

The impressionists' fundamental faithfulness toward the

sights they depicted in Argenteuil is evident in comparing a

number of their paintings. While Manet's Claude Monet in His

Studio Boat and Monet's Sailboats on the Seine (figs. 20, 21)

both present the same boats, houses, and tree at the left and

the same factories in the background, Manet's broader view

also includes a white house and trees at the right that appear

in several other canvases: his own Argenteuil, Caillebotte's

Richard Gallo and His Dog Dicfy Monet's Ball-Shaped Trees

and Studio Boat (fig. 19, cats. 36, 37, and 38). Caillebotte and

Monet both show a group of smaller trees giving way to two

taller trees that are planted close enough together that they

seem to be topped by a single lollipop crown of foliage. The

same pair of trees appears in Boudin's view of the area from

the Argenteuil side of the river (cat. i) and at the end of the

promenade in Monet's many paintings of the site from

upriver (see cat. 8).

Further comparison of The Ball-Shaped Trees with

Richard Gallo reveals that Monet stood to the right of where

Caillebotte painted his picture. Because of the more acute

angle of Monet's line of view, he situates the lollipop trees

between the two houses and includes more of the Champs de

Mars on the right. He also shows us the third chimney of

the house on the left and more of the building's right

side, whereas from Caillebotte's perspective the chimney is

obscured by the roof and the right side of the house is foreshortened. Neither Caillebotte nor Monet was exaggerating

the size of these structures; one still stands, and it is impressive. The two houses make the point that each artist wished

to convey, which is that the place was not removed in time

and space. This is emphasized in Caillebotte's scene, which

includes a host of smaller buildings on the left. Monet's vantage caused most of that development to be hidden by the

large houses and the trees, which occurs more decidedly in

The Studio Boat (cat. 38), making the setting in this veritable

self-portrait appear far more rural than it was.

Monet and Caillebotte were just as meticulous in rendering the highway bridge that crossed the Seine into Argenteuil

from Petit Gennevilliers (cat. 29 and fig. 22). Caillebotte pulls

the bridge closer to the foreground, eliminating the pleasure

craft that Monet includes. But both pay close attention to

structural details of the bridge: each span having two diagonal

braces above the perforated outside arch, ten vertical bands

linking that arch to the lower support for the roadbed, twenty

beams beneath the roadbed that rest on five iron arches, all

springing from stone piers that in Monet's picture are topped

with projecting stone capitals. Both artists show the arches

lined up with the Orgemont hill in the distance, whose

rounded shape imitates that of the bridge's span. Beyond

forging this obvious tie between the landscape and the bridge,

both depict a horizontal stretch of land at the left, punctuated

by a large building—fully visible in Caillebotte's painting, but

just peeking out from behind a pier in Monet's—before the

hill rises on a steep incline, then dips, levels out, and drops

sharply to end just above the railroad bridge, which shoots

across the background of both views. In addition to recording

the unusual contour of the hill, both scenes include the

Moulin d'Orgemont at the summit. It is farther to the right in

Monet's composition, but it is in the same position relative to

the size and orientation of the hill. Both artists also portray

the same factory chimney just below the old mill.

3°

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Fig. 22. Claude Monet, The Highway Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas, Neue Pinakothck, Munich

When Monet steps back, as in Bridge at Argenteuil on a

Gray Day (fig. 23), he retains a surprising amount of information about the bridge: the diagonal supports, the vertical

bands, the posts of the railing. He again shows the railroad

bridge in the background. Huddled around an ocher-colored

boathouse are a steamboat (to the left of the boathouse) and

an assortment of rowboats and sailboats. Monet's own studio

boat is tucked in at the right side of the scene close to the

shore. This is his domain, individualized but orderly, unassuming but carefully constructed. Note the way he plays the

verticals of the masts off against the horizontals of the bridges

and docks and how the divisions of the canvas create such

clear and harmonious geometries. Other views of the site

(see figs. 24, 25) attest to his faithfulness in the details: for

example, the color of the boathouse (including its contrasting

green shutters), the different number of windows on each

side, the docks that stretch from the Petit Gennevilliers shore

into the boat rental area (it was probably from the second

dock that Monet and Renoir painted their classic pair of

Fig. 23. Claude Monet, Bridge at Argenteuil on a Gray Day,

1874, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

On Place and Meaning 3

1
pictures |cats. 32, 33]). Monet includes his floating studio here

as well. The orange-roofed houses and the large tree at the

end of the Petit Gennevilliers bank on the left also appear, as

mentioned above, in Manet's portrait of Monet working in his

studio boat and Monet's landscape painted from the craft

(figs. 20, 21) and in a number of other pictures, each time from

a different angle, each time in the same relative position.

Props are equally reliable. The blue-and-white pots that

Monet purchased in Holland appear frequently, first in

The Garden (cat. 17), then in three paintings from the following year, including The Artist's House at Argenteuil (cat. 18).

The woman in Manet's Boating wears the same hat as the

woman in his Seine at Argenteuil (cats. 40, 41). Monet himself

appears in the same felt-trimmed jacket in two portraits by

Renoir (cats. 15, 19). Despite variations between Monet's and

Renoir's versions of Sailboats at Argenteuil (cats. 32, 33), both

artists record the rigging of the central sailboat with the

precision of experienced yachtsmen, down to the eight dark

rings on the mast between the boom and the gaff. They were

clearly making art from life and saw little need to deviate

from their model.

To be sure, there are isolated incidents in which the

impressionists allowed this fidelity to lapse. In rendering the

Boulevard Héloïse (cats. 4, 5), Sisley omitted the gaslights that

had recently been installed along the left side of the street,

whereas Monet featured them prominently. Sisley avoided

the first one by moving farther down the street and beginning

his view just after this modern intrusion; but he simply

deleted the second one. Monet seems to have exercised similar license when representing the rue de la Chaussée with

Sisley during the same first year in Argenteuil, completely

eliminating the steeple of the town church that rises high

above the houses in Sisley's version, as it did in reality.32 Why

Monet dropped it is unknown.

Of the many canvases completed in Argenteuil, however,

only a few contain such radical omissions or alterations.

Minor variations do occur. The steeple of the church is occasionally elongated; the trestle walls of the railroad bridge

appear solid instead of perforated; the tops of the trees along

the promenade follow dissimilar outlines in several depictions. But these differences are insignificant considering the

exceptional degree to which the paintings are consistent in

their details, large and small.

Monet, Caillebotte, and Manet certainly felt no need to

edit out Argenteuil's industries. Factory buildings cluster at

the end of the promenade and chimneys break the horizon in

many pictures of that area by all three artists (cats. 8, 29, 34).

Substantial industrial compounds near the railroad station are

highlighted in Caillebotte's characteristically forthright image

of a distillery (cat. 25). Chimneys belch smoke, particularly

in Monet's works of this period, just as trains and steamboats

unabashedly spew their dark exhaust across the skies as

evidence of their power.

Fig. 24. Claude Monet, The Boat Basin at Argenteuil, 1874,

oil on canvas, Indiana University Art Museum

Fig. 25. Claude Monet, Boats along the Bant^s of the Seine at Petit

Gennevilliers, 1874, oil on canvas, Private Collection, New York
The railroad was the primary symbol of technological

progress in the nineteenth century, and Monet was the only

artist in the 18705 to create such dramatic renderings as his two

scenes of the railroad bridge at Argenteuil (cats. 26, 27). When

Pissarro painted the railroad bridge at Pontoise (fig. 26), he

nestled the structure in the middle distance and merged it

with its surroundings to camouflage its modernity. Monet's

panoramic view elevates the bridge high above the water as if

it were an ancient Roman aqueduct. Glistening in the sun,

harmoniously setting off the sailboats beneath and the sky

above, the bridge and its steaming trains are a triumph of the

new, an ode to human ingenuity, daring, and design.

It was not always so. In 1871 sections of the bridge lay

in the water or on the ground, its trestle a twisted heap of

iron, its piles crudely amputated or standing forlornly by

the shore (fig. 27). The bridge had been blown up by French

troops as they retreated to the capital in the face of advancing

Prussian soldiers, the lifeline of the town literally ripped from

its place in hopes of deterring the enemy. When Monet

arrived in Argenteuil in late 1871, the bridge would have been

a painful symbol of France's loss in the war. He would have

seen it girded in scaffolding (fig. 28) and meticulously rebuilt.

Although he could have depicted the bridge at any point in

its reconstruction, he chose to wait until every brace came

down and it stood restored to its former grandeur. Only then

could it resume its role as the primary connection to the town

and reaffirm France's resilience and continued faith in

progress. Monet enhances its aura of importance by having

the sunlight bleach its piles so that they look like monolithic

forms and by glossing over the crisscross iron bands of

the trestle, evident from photographs, so that the bridge

seems weightier and more forceful. (Renoir and Caillebotte

showed it this way as well, suggesting that it gave that illusion.33) The different treatments of the bridge in these two

iconic works by Monet are a tribute to his inventiveness.

His changes in vantage point dictated the distinctive framework for each composition.

Similarly, Renoir's Monet Painting in His Backyard

at Argenteuil and Monet's Corner of the Garden with Dahlias

(cats. 19, 20) depict the same site but from different positions.

The large blue-shuttered house appears in each, together with

the tall tree to its right and the rickety wooden fence. But in

Monet's image the house is farther away, which allows the

foliage on the right to assume a larger role—so large that it

conceals the group of houses that is conspicuously included in

Renoir's version. Monet's tactics make the garden seem more

secluded and idyllic than it does in Renoir's hands; he shows

a place where flowers and fauna abound and where modernized figures out of Watteau can wander through a lush bower.

Monet's pastoral landscape is overlooked by only one neighboring structure, not a whole section of town. The point here

is simple—both views may be verifiable, but the truths they

tell are not the same.

Fig. 26. Camille Pissarro, Railroad Bridge at Pontoise, c. 1873,

oil on canvas, Private Collection, U.S.

Fig. 27. Photograph of the railroad bridge at Argenteuil, damaged

during the Franco-Prussian War, c. 1871

Fig. 28. Photograph of the railroad bridge at Argenteuil wrapped

in scaffolding, c. 1871. Musée du Vieil Argenteuil

On Place and Meaning 33
Working within a limited area for an extended period

of time, the impressionists in Argenteuil had to be able to

reinvent their subjects to avoid repetition. This would have

been a particular challenge in winter for someone like Monet,

who was devoted to painting outdoors. But he remained committed to depicting each scene faithfully in all its detail. Two

renderings of his neighborhood underscore this resolution.

In one he looks down a path toward the Boulevard SaintDenis, which cuts through the space on a diagonal (cat. 44).

He stands directly on the route to the railroad station—the

destination, presumably, for at least the three closest pedestrians. If he walked down the path past these wind-battered

figures onto the boulevard, proceeded about fifty paces to the

right, then turned around, he would arrive at the vantage

point he assumed for another painting of the Boulevard

Saint-Denis (fig. 29). The bushes on the left are part of the

undergrowth in the right foreground of the former picture,

which also shows the high-pitched roofs of the houses on the

right more fully; the house with the large chimney is in the

center of both compositions.

Not surprisingly, most of Monet's winter scenes—nearly

two dozen from his years in Argenteuil—were painted close

to home so that he did not have to walk far. These two views

of the Boulevard Saint-Denis include his house, with its pink

exterior and green shutters. The turreted one next door, like

Monet's, was brand new. Both were built on speculation in

f fi-a r <-**& * *{^|PVV43»S¡$ ^ ^^ C^^Sj!^

Fig. 29. Claude Monet, The Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil, 1875, oil on canvas, Private Collection, England

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGIÍNTKUIL 34
1873—! 874

 on

 tand owned by the woman who had rented

Monet his first house in Argenteuil. He must have seen these

homes erected and must have inquired about them, for he

was the first tenant in the pink house, moving in on i October

1874. It was more expensive than his earlier residence—1,400

francs a year as opposed to 1,000—but he was doing well, and

the additional rent was not unreasonable. The property

seemed to suit him; he painted its backyard some fifteen times

in the summers of 1875 and 1876; only Caillebotte painted his

own garden more often—nearly twenty times—but that was

over a period of twelve years.

Within the considerably more limited space of his backyard, Monet had to be especially inventive to meet his

customary level of novelty. But by moving around the garden

or turning in one direction or another, he could change the

entire prospect. Two works executed in the same summer on

the same property, for instance, initially seem worlds apart.

In The Gladioli (cat. 47) a path curves around a shimmering

array of flowers to a place where Camille stands under her

green silk-lined parasol in front of a second bed of flowers

and a large trellis. Everything is strongly geometric; everything but the upper right quadrant is brilliantly illuminated.

In Undergrowth at Argenteuil (fig. 30) the view is consumed by

the glade of trees that created the shaded quadrant in The

Gladioli. With the rear façade of the house in the background

(it had been out of sight behind Monet in The Gladioli], the

artist looks through a shower of sunlight that recalls visions of

Zeus' descent to Danaë in a cascade of golden coins. Nothing

is sharply delineated; even the shape of the house has been

softened by the display of natural splendor.

Monet's fascination with the garden, nurtured by this

first immersion in its potential, would lead him to create a

horticultural paradise in Giverny. There, over the last twentysix years of his life, he would pursue what he began in this

rented backyard, maintaining a similar allegiance to the

forms in front of him. Yet no matter how compelling his later

garden paintings would be—and they are extraordinarily

so—the truths they suggest are different: namely, that the

world is more profound and complex, more beautiful and

elusive, than one can imagine; that art is never based solely on

what one sees; and that realizing the desired combination of

observation and reflection can be—indeed perhaps must

be—an impossibility.

One might suppose that it would have taken years of

struggle and deep consideration of the consequences of looking and painting, feeling and acting, to come to these

understandings. Like all of the impressionists, however,

Monet was a fast learner, in part because he was a lifelong

student, in part because his art was one of ongoing process.

Only five years separated Monet's move from the unruly

suburb of Argenteuil, which he left in January 1878, to the

true countryside of Giverny, where he settled in April 1883.

That ten of Monet's last fifteen Argenteuil garden views were

painted in 1876, to the exclusion of all other pictures of the

town, is significant. It suggests that amid their dazzling light

effects and verisimilitude lay other truths that led to the end

of an era in Argenteuil and to the formulation of another

ideal farther from Paris.

Time and Change

One of the central concerns of the impressionists, which they

refined in the 18705 at Argenteuil, involved the idea of

"instantaneity." Unlike their conservative, academic counterparts, Monet and his friends believed they could capture a

moment in time—passionately, and presumably on the spot.

They were intent on making this a pillar of their movement

for many reasons, chief among them being their desire to

challenge the academy's demand for timelessness in art, with

its implications of discipline, order, and eternity. Loyal to the

realities of nature, the impressionists insisted on painting the

fleeting and spontaneous, because they believed such effects

were more truthful to the ephemeral world around them.

Fig. 30. Claude Monet, Undergrowth in Argenteuil, 1876,

oil on canvas, Private Collection

On Place and Meaning 35
Interest in the instantaneous long predated the impressionists, as artists had always wanted to set down their ideas

quickly before the specifics slipped away on the wings of fleeting inspiration. Most believed that these rapidly noted images

needed to be refined, to be shaped by the mind, given greater

clarity, put to the test of hard-earned techniques: drawing,

modeling, composition. Sketches on their own were interesting for their insights but were not deemed worthy of

assuming the higher ranks of art. The French Academy

nonetheless encouraged sketching, as it developed an artist's

eye and hand, forced him to think and act quickly, and

revealed the depths of his creative potential. It was on the

basis of sketches that candidates for serious prizes were

judged and great works of art were constructed. Thus the

impressionists—by elevating what most of their contemporaries would have seen as a sketch to the level of a finished

picture, and by putting special emphasis on the instantaneous

in all its unrefined frankness—were undermining the very

foundations of French art. Little wonder they provoked such

strong negative reactions. They were held guilty of stopping

the process of art making at its nascent stage, of being committed only to observation without reflection, acting without

thinking, painting without understanding.

This was not the case of course. The impressionists were

exceedingly self-conscious. Willing to embrace the accidental

or the unexpected, they approached their work with rigorous

intelligence and highly developed skills. They differentiated

between finished pictures and what they themselves considered sketches, and they were scrupulous about labeling the

latter as such when they exhibited them. They also sold

sketches for less than finished paintings.

Yet the idea that they could capture an instant in time was

riddled with complications. The impressionists knew that no

one moment was exactly the same as the next, that everything

was in a constant state of flux. Light varied from second to

second; clouds were never stable; water was forever moving.

How could they lock a single moment into paint that would

be meteorologically convincing, particularly when working

outdoors with its attendant distractions? Simply the time it

took to rough in a composition would compromise their

faithfulness to the moment that had inspired it.

It is therefore not surprising that the notion of time, like

that of truth, was somewhat elastic. Monet or Renoir might

start out rendering a specific site at a specific time—they

might return to the same place at the same time over the

course of many days—but by necessity they would have to

invent or recreate certain natural phenomena in the process

of completing the picture. It was the impression of instantaneity that was most important, the appearance of spontaneity,

not actually capturing the moment in a flash. That was

clearly impossible.

This realization led all of the impressionists to complete

their "finished" canvases in the quiet of their studios, not

en plein air. They needed to add harmonizing brushwork

or passages of color and light to make the painting whole.

For decades Monet asserted that nature was his only workplace, but in fact he maintained a studio in Paris during most

of his years at Argenteuil. Renoir rented a studio near his

Montmartre apartment beginning in 1876. Pissarro devoted

a room in his house in Pontoise to completing and storing

pictures, as did Sisley in his house in Marly.

Caillebotte was the most wedded to applying traditional

studio practices. He usually began not with painted sketches

but with drawings, or sometimes photographs of the subject

from which he would then make drawings. When he arrived

at the disposition of the forms he desired, he squared the

drawing and transferred the image to canvas, which itself

was often already divided according to strict geometrical

proportions: halves, quarters, golden sections, rabatments, and

so on. It is largely for this reason that many of his paintings

look so different from those of his fellow impressionists.

Manet was not as compulsive as Caillebotte, as he generally worked alla prima, without any preliminary drawings or

sketches. But he completed his major Argenteuil paintings in

the studio, not on the banks of the Seine. The size of his

Argenteuil canvas (fig. 19) alone would have dictated this

choice; measuring nearly 152 by 122 centimeters, it would

have been impractical to lug to the site every day. Manet even

had friends and relatives pose for the figures in this work and

in Boating: his brother-in-law Rudolphe Leenhoff sat for the

males in both, while a nameless but apparently well-known

model posed for the woman in Argenteuil.^

Many of these impressionist paintings of Argenteuil thus

project a quality that is at odds with how they came into

being. This is not to say that some were not painted on the

spot in one session. Manet's sketches for The Seine at

Argenteuil and Claude Monet in His Studio Boat (cats. 34, 39)

were most likely produced that way, given their rapidly

brushed surfaces and reduced palettes. The same is true of a

handful of landscapes by Monet (see cats. 14, 41, and fig. 21).

Large sections of Woman with a Parasol (cat. 46)—the sky in

particular—seem to have been set down in a single sitting.

But most of Monet's pictures from Argenteuil were built up

over the course of several working sessions. This is also true

of scenes by Renoir, Sisley, and Caillebotte.

Ironically, these seemingly spontaneous paintings that

were realized in days or weeks thus possess two contradictory

temporal constructs, one momentary, the other extended.

Both are embedded in the surfaces of the canvases. The first

is apparent in the deceiving quickness of the artist's touch and

in what seems to be the direct transposition of paint from

palette to picture. The second is sensed in the complicated

patterns those marks create and the many ways in which

the medium is bent to the artist's whim and concern. These

opposing constructs and our experiences of looking at them

parallel the way we experience time itself—the instant

appearing with all of its immediacy, then suddenly passing

to become a memory that can be prolonged indefinitely, either

36 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
in isolation or more often in conjunction with those moments

that came before and after.

The impressionists devised their new picture-making

strategies in part because they did not want to imitate their

seventeenth-century Dutch forebears or the recent Barbizon

painters (although most had done just that early in their

careers). More important, they wanted their art to be consonant with their times. Millet and Corot were still alive when

Monet moved to Argenteuil—both died in 1875, Diaz passed

away the next year, and Daubigny two years later. But the

Barbizon artists were of a generation that had very different

values, experiences, and expectations. The impressionists

were raised at a time of tumultuous change, when nothing

seemed sacred, secure, or systematic, except change itself.

Argenteuil had been a microcosm of that upheaval, which

had been part of its initial appeal.

How reassuring the town must have been to someone

like Monet, who had left France during one of its darkest

moments. Returning in the fall of 1871, he found his beloved

Paris ravaged. The Tuileries Palace lay in ruins as did the

Hôtel de Ville, the Cour des Comptes, the Légion d'Honneur,

thé Palais de Justice, the east end of the rue de Rivoli (fig. 31).

Stories of starvation, confusion, and killings abounded: more

than 160,000 French and German soldiers had died during

the war and the siege of Paris; 20,000 residents of the French

capital died during one bloody week in May 1871 when the

French army swept into Paris with the blessings of the

Prussians to suppress the Commune. The facts were brought

home to Monet with jarring reality, as one of his best friends,

Frédéric Bazille, had been killed in the battle of Beaune-laRoland; and one of his mentors, Gustave Courbet, had been

arrested and condemned to six months in prison.35 Like

almost every other suburb of Paris, Argenteuil had not

escaped unscathed. Its railroad bridge and train station had

been destroyed along with sections of its highway bridge; its

houses had been occupied by the Prussians, its residents

forced to pay 15,000 francs indemnity, its hills transformed

into batteries for enemy cannons (fig. 32).30 But Argenteuil,

like the rest of France, had set its sights on a brave new future

Fig. 31. Photograph showing the destruction of the

Hôtel de Ville in Paris, c. 1871

as it tried to put the frightening twelve months behind it.

As Zola exclaimed to Cézanne in the summer of 1871, "Never

have I had more hope or a greater desire to work...for Paris is

born again."37

When Monet moved to Argenteuil in December 1871,

its bridges were being rebuilt, its factories were running

again, its stretch of the Seine was being restored to its prewar

splendor, just after he arrived, he depicted the highway

bridge under construction, and a year later, the railroad

bridge gleaming in the afternoon sun (cats. 2, 27). In both he

was rendering tangible proof of France's vigor and dedication

as much as he was attempting to capture a moment of diurnal

time. The paintings resonate with heartfelt nationalism

because of the larger era in which they were realized, one

Fig. 32. Engraving of Argenteuil during the Franco-Prussian War, November 1870

On Place and Meaning 37
beyond the confines of clocks and hours. Like so many of his

canvases from these first years in Argenteuil, they are infused

with the widely shared faith that everything was possible and

that, like the phoenix, France would rise from the ashes of its

defeat. To Monet and his impressionist colleagues working

at this time of inspiring vitality, the world—with all of its

contradictions—was indeed worth immortalizing in boldly

applied paint.

Monet's own life at the time paralleled these developments, contributing to the sentiments his paintings convey.

He had rented a substantial new house with a beautiful

garden, which he shared with his new wife (he and Camille

had married in 1870) and young son. He was making more

money and producing more pictures than he probably ever

expected. It could hardly get better. His paintings of

Argenteuil are thus a portrait of his life as much as of the

town or specific times of day: Camille and Jean appear in

more than forty of these works, his studio boat in eight others.

Life was not perfect in his new suburban home, however.

Monet regularly spent more money than he made, despite

earning what were fabulous sums for the time—between

9,000 and 24,000 francs a year (the average laborer in the town

earned a mere 2,500). Confrontations with creditors were

resolved mostly by borrowing money from friends or selling

paintings at discounted rates. (He kept a strict accounting of

his debts and paid his friends back promptly, although some

merchants were treated differently.) Monet rarely paints

Camille as the object of affection. Instead, she assumes the

role of the disengaged Parisian or the stranger whom one

encounters unexpectedly and awkwardly. Or she is the precious flower in the garden, tantalizing but untouchable.

Jean occupies the same nebulous realm; sometimes he is

quizzical, more often aloof. It is hard to know whether

Monet was simply posing his wife and son in evocative positions and endowing them with such attitudes in order to

make modern pictures, or whether he was revealing his

family dynamics. Given the consistency of the images and

his overwhelming allegiance to other subjects that he rendered in Argenteuil, it is more than likely that these works

contain a measure of truth.

Argenteuil itself also became more problematic for Monet.

Its rich array of offerings, which had been so attractive to him

in the beginning, grew less and less appealing as the years

elapsed. The number of paintings in which he depicted the

town is suggestive: in his first year there Monet featured it

thirty-five times; by 1876 only seven; and in 1877 the number

had fallen to four. Something seems to have gone awry.3

It was not that Monet had exhausted his options; he could

have continued to find new motifs. Nor had he become bored

with the place. In a letter to Georges de Bellio in July 1876 he

expressed his hope of staying in his house "where he had

worked so well."39 But a year later that was no longer the case.

In October 1877 he invited another collector, Victor Chocquet,

to come to his studio in Paris, informing him that "starting

tomorrow, I will always be [there] from one o'clock to four."40

Two and a half months later he left Argenteuil for good.

The problem had become Argenteuil. During the time

Monet lived there, it changed dramatically. Between the

census of 1870 and the end of the decade its population rose

from 7,148 to 9,752, or more than thirty-six percent.41 This

was a formidable leap. While many Paris commuters had

moved in, most of the population increase was due to the

broadening economic base that the town's industrial expansion had created. Its industries had grown exponentially.

In addition to the Joly iron works, there were two distilleries,

two chemical plants, two crystal factories, a tannery, a saw

mill, a gas works, factories that made cartons, dye, starch,

machine-made lace, and embroidery, as well as a new iron

plant. This ultimately meant the town was becoming more

working class. It also meant that more open land was being

converted to commerce and housing, which in turn meant

the loss of agrarian traditions and any romantic relationship

with the past.

Critics in 1877 recognized that the impressionists had

generally not indulged in the nostalgia-evoking strategies of

their Barbizon predecessors. Charles Bigot noted that "it is

not true nature that they have looked at and have tried to

render, but rather the nature that one encounters on outings

in the great city or its surroundings, where the harsh notes of

the houses, with their white, red, or yellow walls, and their

green shutters, clash with the vegetation of the trees and form

violent contrasts with it."42 One need only recall Monet's

Houses at the Edge of the Field (cat. 24) to see what he meant.

Bigot's preference lay elsewhere, which he was happy to

admit: "How much better have...our modern landscapists,

the Rousseaus, the Corots, and the Daubignys, understood

how to express not only the poetry but also the truth of

nature! How much better have they represented the countryside, with its waters, its woods, its fields, and its meadows,

with its distant and calm horizon!"43

Argenteuil was becoming ever more distinct from "the

countryside." Initially, Monet had found that exciting. It was

confirmation of the nation's claims to greatness after the war

and the Commune. It demonstrated with aggressive clarity

the ways in which contemporaneity was reshaping the world;

and it relied on the same brazen abandon that the impressionists were using to rewrite the rules of art. But by 1876 the

transformation of the town had lost \tefrisson for Monet; he

spent most of his time painting inside the walls of his garden,

as did Zola's Lantier during his retreat to the country, lacking

the desire if not the will to deal with the complex problems of

the larger world. In 1877 Monet tried to reinvent himself,

returning first to Paris to paint twelve views of the Gare

Saint-Lazare and then that summer to the promenade along

the Seine, one of his favorite sites. But in what must have been

his final depiction of the town, Argenteuil, the Bant^ in Flower

(cat. 52), he displayed in no uncertain terms the unsettling

facts of his adopted town. The work is divided into two parts,

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL 3
the lower half dark and mysterious, the upper half filled with

a golden glow. While the foreground flowers seem twisted

and ominous, the background appears to hold promise. In

contrast to the many light-filled views of the promenade that

Monet produced in 1872 (see cat. 8), this picture evokes alienation and disharmony. Although people have still come to

boat on the river or sit on the banks, the earlier charm of place

has faded for Monet.

Argenteuil's town fathers were of a different ilk. They

were convinced that more factories meant more jobs, which

meant more progress, which meant more advantages. It was

a well-intentioned policy. It was just antithetical at some point

to those like Monet who wanted to maintain a meaningful

relationship to nature and strike a balance between the

bounty of change and the beauties of the environment.

Argenteuil had tipped the scales in one direction. It was

not just a question of the town's myopic focus, however.

Other forces were at work as well, mostly emanating from the

capital. In 1869 Paris officials had begun siphoning off more

than a million gallons of city sewer water and pumping it into

an irrigation system that fertilized some ninety acres of the

plains of Gennevilliers (fig. 33). A novel idea, it had an immediate impact. Vegetable crops grew extremely well, and land

rentals rose five hundred percent in a year.44 But the operation

essentially portended the conversion of the seemingly idyllic

fields in the backgrounds of paintings by Monet and

Caillebotte into municipally controlled cesspools.45

The pollution of the river was worse. When Baron

Haussmann laid fifty-seven miles of new streets through Paris,

opening the overgrown medieval city to light and air in the

18505 and i86os, he laced the capital with sewer pipes that could

begin to relieve its mounting waste and unbearable stench.40

Ingenious but primitive, this vast system of pipes collected

fetid material and carried it to two locations north of the city,

one in Asnières, the other in Saint-Denis.47 The two were just

upriver from Argenteuil. Together they handled "154,000 tons

of solids and 77,000 tons of dissolved matter" a year, which

meant they simply pumped them into the river. During the

first years of its operation, the system seemed commodious, but

by the 18705 material had settled on the bottom of the river

and had begun to infect the water. The mayor of Argenteuil

registered a formal complaint in 1872: "Between the highway

Fig. 33. Engraving by V. Rose showing the irrigation of the plains of Gennevilliers, from Assainissement de la Seine, éd. Gauthier-Villars (c. 1875)

On Place and Meaning 39
bridge and the floating laundry houses that are along the

promenade, sludge has built up all along the banks....The

water for a rather long distance no longer moves...[and]

traffic on the promenade becomes unpleasant." In 1874 the

mayor wrote again: "Before long, maybe in several days with

the heat, the water level is going to drop again and expose a

considerable area of choking, smelly slime." By 1878 the

mayor wrote directly to a government lawyer: "The

pollution of the river is complete....If the complaints are less

lively and less frequent, it is because people are tired of complaining uselessly....The left half of the river [opposite

Argenteuil), which seven or eight years ago was a little

cleaner than the right, has become just as thick with material

of all kinds."48

In the i86os Zola claimed that Monet loved "with a

particular affection nature that man makes modern." Monet

had demonstrated the truth of that assertion during his years

at Argenteuil. But by 1877 he had had enough. The changes

in the town over time were incompatible with his aims as a

landscape artist. After several months in Paris he resettled in

Vétheuil, to the north of Argenteuil, some sixty kilometers

from the capital. Three years later he moved to Poissy, which

he abhorred. Then in 1883, desperate to find a more sympathetic locale, he discovered Giverny. It had no industries,

pleasure seekers, housing developments, or pollutants. Its 279

residents were primarily farmers, their houses and barns

quaintly nestled against a hill that afforded beautiful views

of the upper Seine valley. No Paris skyline loomed on the

horizon; no factory chimneys broke the harmonious rhythms

of the earth. For the next forty-three years, from April 1883

until Monet's death in November 1926, Giverny was home.

There, among the spectacular water and flower gardens he

constructed, he could still be engaged with time and change,

but the terms were dictated by nature, not by the progressiveminded powers of modernity.

Meanwhile, Caillebotte and his brother built two houses

on the banks of the Seine near Petit Gennevilliers, directly

across from Argenteuil, just a year before Monet settled in

Giverny. The region had clearly not lost all of its allure. Six

years later Caillebotte declared Petit Gennevilliers to be his

primary residence. With his resources, he could have lived

anywhere. That he chose this humble community attests to

his lack of pretension.49 It also says something about the way

a place could appeal to various people at different times.

Unlike Monet, Caillebotte was a passionate yachtsman.

Beginning in 1880, he was one of two vice presidents of the

Cercle de la Voile de Paris, which had its headquarters in

Argenteuil. Living a stone's throw from his boat and a short

walk to one of the best boat makers in the region was attractive to Caillebotte, whereas it had little relevance to Monet.

Caillebotte could participate in regattas every weekend

merely by walking out his door. Moreover, being a true

Parisian, he liked those areas that "man makes modern" and

would have felt out of his element in Giverny.

Fig. 34. Auguste Renoir, The Petit Bras of the Seine, 1888,

oil on canvas, Private Collection, New York

This is not to say that Caillebotte disdained unadorned

nature. After views of boats on the Seine, the subject he

painted most often was the Petit Bras (cat. 51), a site that

remained secluded, beguiling, and undeveloped. Renoir came

to visit Caillebotte often and emerged with canvases that

attest to the lasting charm of the spot (see cat. 49 and fig. 34).

Neither of these two artists was as inclined as Monet was

toward pure landscape; both preferred the figure, which

enabled them to tolerate changes in the area more readily

than their friend did. Who but Caillebotte could have painted

laundry fluttering in the breeze or one of the biggest factories

in Argenteuil billowing smoke (cats. 10, 25)? Even rendering

the fields of Gennevilliers (cat. 23), he focused on cultivated

land, as if to reveal the hand of human beings more than the

vagaries of nature, something one senses in the artist's own

tight brush work and his meticulous application of paint.

When Caillebotte died in February 1894,

 ms

 funeral

 was

held in Paris, not in Petit Gennevilliers. He was a man of the

city. He was laid to rest in Père Lachaise, the ultimate city

cemetery. All the impressionists attended the funeral; he had

supported them continuously over the years, forming an

extraordinary collection of their work that he willed to the

nation. Hundreds of others came to pay their respects, among

them his neighbors in Petit Gennevilliers. His love for the

suburb and all that it offered had been amply communicated

to them at the same time it had been immortalized in paint.

Appropriately, it was four sailors from Argenteuil's sister

town who carried Caillebotte's casket. It was the final alliance

of a remarkable place with an unparalleled group of painters.

40 
Notes

1

 Emile Zola, The Masterpiece (1886; Oxford, 1999), 29, 139.

2

 Zola, The Masterpiece, 231.

3

 Emile Zola, "Mon Salon. IV. Les Actualistes," L'Evénement Illustré

(24 May 1868).

4

 Paul Hayes Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art (New Haven and

London, 1995), 166 n. 77.

5

 Monet spent as many as sixteen months away from Argenteuil

during these years. His actual working time there was closer to four

years and eight months, which means he painted more than three

paintings every month, or one every ten days.

6

 Boudin may have played a role in introducing Monet to Argenteuil,

for he worked there in the i86os. He also was living near Monet

in Paris in December 1871 and subsequently wrote about seeing

him frequently. See Charles F. Stuckey, Claude Monet, 1840-1926

(New York, 1995), 196; and Tucker 1995, 53.

7

 Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil (New Haven and London,

1982), 23 n. 4.

8

 Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881), trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth, 1976), 33.

9

 Emile Zola, La Bête humaine (1890), trans. Leonard Tancock

(Harmondsworth, 1977), 58, 154.

10

 Tucker 1982, 17 n. 19.

11

 Tucker 1982, 19 n. 30.

12

 Monet to Pissarro, 17 June [1871], w. 59 in Daniel Wildenstein,

Claude Monet, Biographie et catalogue raisonné (Lausanne, 1974),

427-428.

13

 Monet to Paul Alexis, 7 May 1871, first published in L'Avenir

National, 5 May 1873; then as w. 25 in Wildenstein 1974, 428.

14

 Paul Alexis, L'Avenir National (1873), 309.

15

 E. Drumont, "L'Exposition du b.d.C." Le Petit Journal, 19 April

1874,2.

16

 Monet to Bazille, 26 August 1864, w. 9 in Wildenstein 1974, 420, cited

and trans, in John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th ed.

(New York, 1973), m.

17

 Monet to Boudin, October-November 1864, w. 13 in Wildenstein

1974, 421, cited and trans, in Rewald 1973, 112.

18

 Monet to Bazille, 26 August 1864, w. 9 in Wildenstein 1974, 427-428,

cited and trans, in Rewald 1973, in.

19

 Tucker 1995, 77.

20

 Monet to Pissarro, 1871, w. 59 in Wildenstein 1974, 427—428.

21

 Tucker 1982, 10 n. 4.

22

 Monet to Pissarro, 5 December 1873, w. 74 in Wildenstein 1974, 429.

23

 Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society

(New Haven, 1988), 313 n. 40; Juliet Wilson-Bareau has suggested

that Manet began Boating in 1875. See "L'Année impressioniste de

Monet: Argenteuil et Venise en 1874," Revue de l'art 86 (1989), 28-33.

24

 See Herbert 1988, 244, for further disparities.

25

 Cezanne's letter to his son Paul, 8 September 1906, cited and trans, in

Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley, 1968), 22.

26

 Monet to Bazille, 15 July [1864], w. 8 in Wildenstein 1974, 420, cited

and trans, in Rewald 1973,

 1II e

27

 Richard Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism (Chicago, 1984).

^ Zola, The Masterpiece, 86.

29

 Zola, The Masterpiece, 41.

30

 Albert Wolff, Le Figaro, 3 April 1876.

31

 Tucker 1995, 77.

32

 Tucker 1982,28.

33

 Ironically, it was the stripped-down design of the bridge that some

people in Argenteuil found offensive in 1863. The editor of the local

newspaper called it "a heavy and primitive work...a wall of iron...a

tunnel without a roof." Another prominent figure in Argenteuil

felt the bridge needed embellishments: "the [piles] should have

been surmounted by carved capitals instead of the bulging blobs that

sit there now....The [trestle] should have been adorned with some

cast-iron decorations, which would have broken up this relentless

straight line." Short of that, "the mounds of earth at the end of the

bridge which cut off the view of the plains of Gennevilliers [should]

be planted with trees whose foliage will reach beyond the rails and

close off the horizon more agreeably." Ten years later trees stood at

either end of the bridge, as evident in several of Monet's pictures

(cats. 26, 27), performing the function this detractor desired.

The reactions of these two residents were not unexpected, to the

extent that the bridge design was novel, but what added to their

disappointment was the fact that their own Joly iron works, which

had fabricated the trestle, had been obliged to follow someone else's

design; if the firm had been commissioned to "draw up the

plans...we would not be criticizing the design today." Local pride ran

deep. See Tucker 1995, 73-74-

34

 Jacques-Emile Blanche suggested that the skipper in Boating

might have been Baron Barbier, a prominent yachtsman and a friend

of Manet's. See Manet, Portraits of a Lifetime, trans, and ed. Walter

Clement (London, 1937), 39.

35

 Courbet was prosecuted a second time after his release from prison

in March 1872 and fled the country in July 1873, taking refuge in

Switzerland, where he died in ignominy four years later.

36

 Tucker 1982,61.

37

 Zola to Cézanne, 4 July 1871, in Correspondance, vol. 2, éd. H. B.

Bakker (Montreal, 1978-1991), 293-294.

38

 In terms of overall output, too, Monet produced more than fifty

paintings in 1872 but fewer than twenty in all of 1877.

39

 Monet to Georges de Bellio, 25 July 1876, w. 95 in Wildenstein

I

974>431-

40

 Monet to Victor Chocquet, 25 October 1877, w. 109 in Wildenstein

1974,432.

41

 Tucker 1982, 15.

42

 Charles Bigot, "Causerie artistique. L'Exposition des 'impressionistes,'"

La Revue politique et littéraire (28 April 1877), 1,045-1,048.

43

 John House, Landscapes of France: Impressionism and Its Rivals

(London, 1995), 23.

44

 David H. Pickney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris

(Princeton, 1972), 141.

45

 Tucker 1995, 153.

4J

 Most apartments in the capital did not have running water until the

turn of the century, which means waste material was dumped,

burned, or removed by hand; in 1871 more than 10 percent of Paris

buildings had no legal disposal service. See Pickney 1972, 70, 145.

47

 Pickney 1972, 132.

48

 Tucker 1995, 176, 178-181.

49

 Caillebotte ran for a seat on the town council in 1888, was elected,

and served until December 1891. See Anne Distel, Gustave

Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist (Paris, 1995), 318.

4 On 1 Place and Meaning
Eugène Boudin

The Seine at Argenteuil

c. i860

oil on canvas

29.9 x 47 (ii K x 18/2)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia

Late in his life, when he was established, wealthy, and grateful—

a rare combination for an avant-garde artist—Claude Monet

paid the ultimate compliment to the far less successful Eugène

Boudin, his teacher in the 18505. In an interview that he gave

to Boudin's biographer, Georges Jean-Aubry sometime in the

early 19205, the arch-impressionist declared his debt to the

older painter in a way that he had been hesitant to do before,

unabashedly admitting, "If I have become a painter, I owe it

all to Boudin." Why Monet was so forthcoming at this point—

he was in his eighties—remains unclear. What is undeniable,

however, is the impact that Boudin had on the aspiring artist

at the outset of his career.

Boudin had distinguished himself by becoming the first

landscape painter in France to focus attention on contemporary

life in Normandy, specifically on the invasion by the urban

bourgeoisie of the coastal towns of Deauville, Trouville, and

Le Havre, where he was born. Boudin developed this interest

in the 1850$, perhaps under the influence of popular illustrators

who were beginning to document sites along the coast of the

English Channel that were being transformed from maritime

ports to places for leisure activity. With a bias toward change

and an openness to novelty that were essential to the development of a modernist sensibility, Boudin proclaimed his seminal

aesthetic without compunction: "The peasants have their

painter...but do not those middle-class people strolling on the

jetty toward the sunset have the right to be fixed upon the

canvas, to be brought to light? They are often resting from

hard work, those people who leave their offices [and] consulting

rooms. If there are some parasites among them, are there not

also those who have fulfilled their task?"

When the famously unassuming Boudin formulated this

utterly novel notion in the 18505, the leading avant-garde

landscape painters in France were Jean-François Millet and

Gustave Courbet, both of whom were attempting to carry

their compatriots beyond the work of Théodore Rousseau,

Charles Daubigny, Narcisse Diaz, and Camille Corot, who

had formed the revolutionary School of 1830. These remarkable

older painters had brought tremendous changes to landscape

art over the previous twenty years with their heartfelt views

of rural France, but by the middle of the century their work

had become predictable if not mainstream.

In an effort to push the genre of landscape even further,

Millet monumentalized the peasant and anointed the agrarian

practices of France with a kind of religious aura. Courbet in

contrast deftly revealed the contradictions of country life on

canvases of immense proportions, which he proceeded to cover

with painterly bravura. Although Boudin could have found

material similar to either of these artists, he opted instead to

paint something even more modern: middle-class pleasure

seekers enjoying the light and air of recently developed seaside

resorts far from Millet's Barbizon, Courbet's Ornans, and the

teeming capital of Paris.

It is often said that Monet did not appreciate the work

of Boudin when he first encountered it in Le Havre, where

Monet's family had moved when he was five. If this assessment

was even accurately reported, it was made when Monet was

around sixteen and it was most likely colored by his own youthful sense of things. By the end of the 1850$ he certainly thought

differently, as he encouraged his teacher to come to Paris

where he had gone to immerse himself in its art and history.

After visiting the annual Salon at the Palais de l'Industrie in

1859, he wrote to Boudin urging him to abandon the smaller

Norman market and try his luck in the larger fray. Monet

was not writing to a novice, however. Boudin had lived and

worked in Paris every year since the 18405. He sold his paintings through a gallery in the capital, and he had submitted a

picture to the same Salon that Monet saw, after having shown

his work during the previous decade in Rouen, Bordeaux,

Marseilles, and Le Havre.

Boudin's connections to Paris are worth reviewing, because

he is characterized so frequently as a Norman painter dedicated

to rendering its beaches for a local audience. Clearly that was

not his exclusive focus. This little-known, completely unprecedented painting, which is startlingly fresh yet meticulously

rendered, is perhaps most striking for its date: approximately

1866. This indicates that Boudin had come to Argenteuil

nearly five years before Monet and his colleagues and that he

had painted the same site as his youthful contemporaries—

the promenade along the Seine—long before they descended

on the place.

Why Boudin went to Argenteuil remains a mystery. There

is no written record of his visit and no other painting of the

town from his hand.

This picture provides plenty of evidence of Boudin's

significance to impressionism, as it contains all of the essentials

that the younger painters would exploit in the following

decade: tangible light, heightened color, broken brushwork,

and modern subject matter—contemporary men and women

42 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

I
Catalogue 43
boating or strolling along the banks of the river. There is an

immediacy about the scene as a whole that suggests it was

painted on the spot, which would have conformed to Boudin's

general practice. At the same time, elements have been closely

observed: the trees along the promenade, the laundry houses in

the distance, the highway bridge over the river, and the figures

in the foreground.

The figures are all in stylish costumes and are synonymous

with those that populated Boudin's contemporaneous scenes

of Normandy—elegant, well-off, seemingly carefree. He

includes more than a dozen of them here, in at least four

separate groups. It is not clear whether those in the rowboat

on the right are of the same social rank as those on the bank;

in various short stories, Guy de Maupassant eloquently

described boaters as a slightly rowdier sort. But their presence

here emphasizes Argenteuil's multiple attractions.

Boudin suggests its appeal not only through the pleasurable

activities and the natural charm of the landscape but also by

the way he has arranged his scene. Viewed from a slightly

elevated position, the bank spreads generously across the canvas,

creating a graceful, continuous arc. This allows the Seine to

appear quite wide before it turns to the right and exits the

picture, more so than in most of Monet's depictions of the area.

Given the height of the figures, the trees along the promenade

also seem substantial. Most impressive is the sky. Although its

facture is restrained by impressionist standards, it is rendered

with many small overlapping strokes of color that make it

wonderfully textured and visually engaging. Its sheer size in

relation to the rest of the picture encourages one to believe

that the site is spacious, airy, and desirable—precisely the kind

of place Boudin's middle-class office workers went to ease the

tensions of the city and enjoy the rewards of their hard work.

Whether Monet or his colleagues ever saw this understated,

modestly proportioned painting is unknown. But it more

than justifies Monet's praise of his less well known mentor.

As with his views of Normandy, this work demonstrates that

Boudin was one step ahead of the next generation, applying

his significant talents to this soon-to-be-discovered suburban

town with formidable acumen and characteristic foresight.

Detail, cat. i

44

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

Claude Monet

The Highway Bridge under Repair

1872

oil on canvas

60 x 80.7 (23

 5/8 x 31/4)

Private Collection, on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum,

Cambridge

At first glance this picture seems strikingly simple. A broad

stretch of the Seine occupies most of the lower half of the view,

its surface as smooth and unmodulated as the corresponding

rectangle of blue-gray sky above. Jutting into the scene from

halfway up the left side is an intricate web of scaffolding,

behind which rises the darker form of Argenteuil's highway

bridge. Like a sculpture by Sol Le Witt, the horizontal and

vertical timbers of the scaffolding create a series of open geometric structures, which lead to the town on the opposite

shore. A steamboat headed downriver has just entered the

wooden maze, its bow obscured, its prominent smokestack

emitting a billowing cloud of steam that rises to the top of the

canvas and is reflected in the still water below. Silhouetted

above the bridge and continuing to the right are the tops of an

irregular line of trees, which end just beyond the point where

the bridge reaches the shore. Two simple buildings on the far

bank are punctuated by single rows of vertical windows.

As is generally true with Monet's work at Argenteuil,

this painting is the product of close observation and is more

complex than it initially appears. The considerable traffic on

the bridge suggests the area generated more activity than

the placid waters of the Seine might imply. The scaffolding,

which is only partly constructed, begins on the left with long

horizontal beams that give way after the second arch of the

bridge to an almost indecipherable pattern of lines and shapes.

Photograph of the highway bridge at Argenteuil flanked

by scaffolding, c. 1871. Musée du Vieil Argenteuil

The tall, boxlike forms closest to the bridge represent the

completed section; their lower counterparts to the right lack a

second level and a crisscross support system. Each timber is

carefully articulated, however, with strong contrasts of dark

and light, and the ends of many beams are highlighted with

yellow caps that appear to have been cautionary markings

applied by the construction company that erected the scaffolding. Monet's attention to such details is an indication of his

commitment to rendering the world with the kind of accuracy

that Gustave Courbet—the founder of Realism and one of

Monet's mentors—would have admired.

Work on the scaffolding began in November 1871 after

several spans of the highway bridge were destroyed during the

Franco-Prussian War. The intention was to create a separate

structure across the Seine during the bridge's reconstruction.

This was not done for safety or efficiency alone; the bridge was

owned and operated by Argenteuil, which gave the town the

right to exact a toll from everyone using it. But the town fathers

also had to maintain the structure, which meant that they were

obliged to repair the damage from the war. The longer the

bridge was closed to traffic, the more money the town stood

to lose. It therefore contracted with a private company to

guarantee a continued revenue stream. The temporary structure was completed in February 1872, although it was not

officially opened to traffic until September 1872, when repairs

began on the main bridge. That work was finished later the

same year, and the temporary bridge taken down soon after.

It is difficult to know whether Monet has represented the

highway bridge when the second structure was being built or

dismantled; the former is more likely on stylistic grounds, given

Monet's restrained handling. In any case, he has clearly elected

to paint a scene that is distinctly contemporary and layered

with meaning. He appears to confirm his interest not only in

the material facts of the world around him but also in the

patriotic notions of progress and recovery after the disastrous

war and Commune of 1870—1871. The reconstruction Monet

depicts in this painting offers evidence that these humiliations

were over and a new day was emerging for his beloved country.

The peace and calm of the Seine, like the rigor and strength of

the scaffolding, thus assume significance beyond their apparent

realities. They are tangible and metaphorical proof of the

nation's determination to reassert its stature—deliberately,

soberly, and convincingly.

6 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

2
Catalogue 47
3

Claude Monet

The Petit Bras of the Seine

1872

oil on canvas

52.6 x 7i.8(2oKx 28/4)

The National Gallery, London

A soft, lilac haze hangs over this limpid scene, one of the most

restrained the artist created during his years in Argenteuil.

Rounding the edges of forms and cushioning color contrasts,

the delicate atmosphere evokes the wistful beauty of the

place while enriching the innumerable harmonies Monet

discovered in the landscape. Quiet and poetic, the painting

stands in Monet's oeuvre as a unique foil to the more impassioned canvases that would follow and as a reminder of the

arch-impressionist's essential roots.

The setting is as gracious as it is reserved. The horizon

remains well below the middle of the canvas, allowing the

land to recede gradually, logically, and reassuringly. Like

many more traditional landscape painters, Monet provides

unimpeded access to the site by stretching the riverbank across

the width of the immediate foreground. Sloping gently down

from the left, the bank is textured by a tawny, yellowish green

covering that parts like a stole to reveal the purple brown

earth underneath. Monet orchestrates similar undulating bands

of this ground cover and soil up to the crest of a hill in the

background, near which rise two rows of poplars. The first

row runs parallel to the scalloped ridges of the land; the other

advances along the near bank of the river. Curiously, Monet

reverses the Renaissance norm in the second group and depicts

the more distant trees at increasing heights. He follows a

related strategy in defining the river; it widens in the middle

ground and narrows as it draws closer to the viewer.

The strong recession established by the denser row of

poplars on the right counters Monet's subtle reversals. Arranged

as a forceful though porous triangle, these trees animate the

picture through their projection into space, their thin, twisting

trunks, their delicate screen of leaves, and their shimmering

reflections in the river. At once dynamic and elegant, the

gauzy foliage and irregular trunks stand out against the enormous sky, with its unity of tone and texture. They also provide

a poignant contrast to the slighter, sparser trees on the left.

Without this cultivated row of poplars, the painting would

seem more rural, perhaps even desolate. These trees, however,

did not grow naturally along the bank; they were planted

there as a crop to be harvested, as is clear from their consistent

height and spacing. They therefore suggest that the painting is

not merely a picturesque view of an unknown body of water.

The poplars are not the only sign of human intervention

in the area. Monet includes a large house on the right and two

figures on the left. It is not certain what the two figures are

doing: one reaches forward with both arms as if he were casting

(though he does not appear to hold a fishing pole); the other is

just below the lip of the bank, either in the water or by its edge,

and raises one arm as if to inspect something. Their cryptic

actions aside, the figures keep the painting in the present. They

are not idyllic peasants working the fields or mythological

staffage. They are part of Monet's world and thus underscore

his allegiance to rendering the suburban environment as he

saw it, not as he imagined it or wished it to be.

That said, it is important to note that no jarring elements

appear here to remind us of the tensions of modern life.

Despite the presence of the house, trees, and men, the scene

does not seem suburban. On the contrary, it recalls the art of the

Barbizon painters who preceded Monet, particularly Charles

Daubigny and Camille Corot. Their views of meandering

streams and quiet glades are the references for this image, just

as their retreat from Paris into the surrounding countryside—

like Monet's to Argenteuil—was essential to the advancement

of modern French landscape art. Monet would always hold

their achievement in special esteem. It was the Barbizon artists

who taught their successor the value of looking at humble bits

of nature and of allowing their special, unassuming poetry to

be part of the elevated world of art.

It is therefore perhaps not surprising that Monet would

have walked to this slightly backwater site to paint this picture,

one of the first he completed on moving to Argenteuil in the

winter of 1871. It was an opportunity to reaffirm his origins in

that noble past and to begin to find his way in the complexities

of his competitive present.

8 
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49
5°

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Alfred Sisley

The Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

39-5 x 59- 6(

I

5

/ 2X 23/2)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

When Sisley came to visit his friend Monet in 1872, he was

attracted to the streets of Argenteuil as much as he was to its

stretch of the river, a predilection that no other impressionist

who joined Monet in his new suburban home demonstrated to

the same degree. Only Caillebotte also focused on the town

itself, and that occurred more than five years after Monet had

left. The present view, depicting one of the main streets in

Argenteuil, testifies to Sisley's refined feeling for the dampness

of the day and the penetrating gray atmosphere. It also reveals

his keen eye for the particularities of the site and the ways they

could be configured to convey larger meanings.

Sisley painted the scene from a position on the sidewalk by

a row of trees, part of the wooded area of town leading to the

promenade and the river, which lay to the right. In the fiction

of the picture he is like the pedestrian on the sidewalk in front

of him, a man merely going about his business. The converging edges of the sidewalk establish a rapid recession in space,

reinforced by the descending line of foliage. The towering

trees make us feel small, while their uniformity contributes to

the anonymity of the place.

The boulevard, more than twice the width of the sidewalk,

increases these sensations as it rushes by, pulled by the diagonal

lines of its curbs and the parallel strokes that define its surface.

Sisley's position on the sidewalk therefore appears safer and

more stable, something its more integrated, horizontal brush

marks tend to reinforce. Yet the figures in the scene all walk

away from us, adding to our sense of isolation, and although

the horse-drawn carts head toward us, they are separated from

one another and from us by considerable space. This is not a

rural village where everyone knows each other and is engaged

in everyone else's lives. Sisley has accurately gauged and presented the urban character of this street, with its breadth,

coolness, and detachment.

The houses along the avenue contribute to this feeling of

aloofness. While individualized in size and design, they have

no one at the windows, no laundry hanging outside, no children

at play. Mainstream artists would have added such details to

humanize the view, but Sisley begins his picture on the left

with a long, tall wall that dwarfs the figures in front of it and

offers no entrance or break in its insistent lines and planes.

Even the two leafless trees behind it seem forlorn.

Sisley's business was to look and record, a task he appears

to have performed faithfully; the painting seems convincing

and authentic, as if we are on the street with him witnessing

its tempos and accents. The more we study the work, however,

the more Sisley's detachment becomes evident, stressing the

fact that he was merely a visitor, with scant connection to the

people or the place he was depicting. All the elements could

be considered charming, but he relieves them of that burden,

presenting them as ordinary and unpretentious. A large part

of the meaning of the picture lies in this deflation, in the

emptiness the artist found there, and in the resulting disjuncture. Sisley, like the other impressionists, wanted his painting

to speak on a higher level about the complexities of the world.

This canvas and one that Monet completed of the Boulevard

Héloïse at the same time (cat. 5) are proof of the artists'

ambitions for their art. Underscoring the contradictory feelings

that both artists had for this town, they embody some of the

fundamental contrasts that permeated modern life—security

and alienation, confidence and vulnerability, connectedness

and separation.

These two paintings represent one of the first instances in

the decade when two leading avant-garde artists stood together

to render the same scene simultaneously. The painters adopted

different vantage points, with Monet in the middle of the street

focusing the whole scene at the center of his canvas, while Sisley

orients his view to the right. Sisley makes the contrast between

the trees and the houses greater; Monet opts to break the line

of trees, making the two sides of the boulevard less consistent.

Sisley even omits altogether the lampposts that play a prominent

role in Monet's composition. The artists emerged with two

quite distinct paintings, though both tell essentially the same

story. This attests to their independence while emphasizing

their shared concerns. It was a combination that would serve

all of the painters well who came to work in Argenteuil, just

as it would the advancement of modern art in France.

View of the Boulevard Héloïse, early twentieth century

Catalogue 5

1

4
Claude Monet

The Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

35 x 59(i3Kx 23/4)

Yale University Art Gallery, Collection of

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, B.A. 1929

Monet set up his easel in the middle of the Boulevard Héloïse so

that its hard-packed, earthen surface fills the foreground of his

view. Stretching from one side of this modest-sized canvas to

the other, the street has the look and feel of a city thoroughfare,

not a country lane, an impression heightened by its orderliness.

It is bordered by sidewalks—a rarity for the time—and it

recedes sharply into the distance. The dark edges of curbs on

either side act like railroad tracks or the orthogonals of a linear

perspective system, converging just to the right of center. They

achieve the compelling illusion of deep space, an effect enhanced

by other diagonals—the roofs of the houses, the walls along

the sidewalk, the row of trees, the ruts in the street—all of

which lead to the same vanishing point. That point becomes

the focus for the entire painting, as it is where the sky, street,

houses, and trees begin or end.

This undisguised convergence of discrete parts makes the

scene seem simple and direct. But the view is complicated by

a number of enigmas, beginning with the emptiness in the

foreground. The bottom third of the canvas contains no forms

or incidents; no people or carts, no lighting effects or distractions relieve the lurking sense of isolation. Townspeople in the

middle ground only increase the aura of alienation, as they do

not acknowledge Monet's presence and they generally appear

alone. Everything seems correct and proper, but nothing is

intimately related. The regimented line of trees breaks abruptly

for no apparent reason, shrinking from a sizable group in the

foreground to a much smaller one in the background. On the

opposite side of the boulevard two trees poke up from behind

the first long wall, one short and squat, the other tall and thin.

The first is more contained within its yard; the second leans

out into the public realm beyond the wall. Each house varies

in size, design, and location vis-à-vis the street, although all

maintain a stately reserve.

The biggest contrast is between these houses and the trees

on the right. The latter are a product of group decisions and

town ordinances. Evenly spaced and rigorously aligned, they

form a homogeneous unit that closes off the view softly but

emphatically. The houses also conform to town codes, but they

are highly individualistic. They sit on their lots differently,

rise to staggered heights, and have variously aligned walls.

Nonetheless, Monet maintains an evident aesthetic order:

consider the Rothko-like rectangles on the walls along the

sidewalk, or the way the nearest lamppost divides the space

between the two trees, bisects a window of the third and

smallest house, then rises to the roofline of that house precisely

where it joins the chimney of the next.

The ordering extends even to the positions of the figures.

A man on the right stands between two tree trunks, another in

the space between the two groups of trees. A woman on the left

walks in front of a horizontal green rectangle, her child in front

of a vertical gray one. Behind them a woman is silhouetted

against a light beige panel that separates two darker shapes.

The driver of the cart overlaps the edge of the house behind

him. Similar coordination occurs throughout the picture.

Such care is typical of Monet during his years at Argenteuil,

as he probes the place for its internal rhythms and metaphors.

For instance, each side of the street has ironically assumed

characteristics more associated with the other. One would expect

nature to be the more unpredictable; trees in a forest setting

would not grow as uniformly as they do here. Similarly, one

might think the houses would be more regular. Instead the

human structures have appropriated the diversity of nature,

while nature has been forced to conform to the strictures of

human society.

These inversions were typical of what was occurring in

modern France as the powers of progress reshaped the nation.

As a landscape painter and new member of suburbia, Monet

was sensitive to the latent meaning of these changes, finding,

like his impressionist colleagues, the outskirts of Paris to be a

revealing microcosm of the new world order. Monet describes

that emerging reality with poetry and specificity in this

seemingly straightforward image of his newly adopted home.

Although the muted light and muffled atmosphere make the

scene appear spontaneous and unpremeditated, nothing could

be further from the truth.

5

2 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

5
Catalogue 53
Alfred Sisley

La Grande Rue, Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

65.4 x 46.2 (25-Kx i8/s)

Norfolk Muséums Service (Norwich Castle Museum)

Sisley does not appear to have ever visited Argenteuil prior to

coming to stay with Monet in the late winter or early spring

of 1872, some six months after his friend had moved to this

conveniently located suburb of Paris. How long he remained

and how many pictures he painted during his stay is difficult

to determine. But a canvas such as this is easy to identify as a

product of his time there, as it represents one of Argenteuil's

main streets.

The Grande Rue ran east-west through the center of town

and was heavily trafficked because of its commercial activities.

It terminated in a square in front of the local church, which is

marked by the spire in the background of Sisley's picture. The

buildings that lined the street were old and varied, standing at

different heights and distances from the sidewalk. This is not

a Haussmann-planned boulevard like those just built in Paris.

Rich in incident, though relatively consistent in color value,

this painting reflects Sisley's sympathetic engagement with the

site and his interest in recording its textured, lived-in character.

Sisley painted this scene while standing in the street near

the intersection of the Grande Rue and the Avenue de l'Hôtel

Dieu, which enters on the left. Despite its modest presence, the

Avenue de l'Hôtel Dieu plays an important role in the picture,

as it expands what would otherwise be a confined foreground

and widens what is still a relatively narrow march into space.

The immediate area around Sisley is empty, which contributes

to the effect of openness, but the thoroughfare fills up quickly

as it moves toward the church. Large carts have stopped

along both curbs, blocking significant parts of the view. Each

rises nearly one story and takes up almost half the width of

the passage; other vehicles would have trouble squeezing by.

A number of men and women occupy the sidewalks, while

nearly as many walk in the street. They all add to the appeal

of the place, although there is little interaction among them,

making what might be merely a quaint scene slightly aloof, as

if Sisley sought to preserve the town's urban qualities as much

as he wanted to indulge in its old-time allure. We are strangers

here. Only the white horse on the right looks directly at us,

but from some distance.

That coolness is communicated as well by Sisley's restrained

palette. Dominated by closely coordinated browns, beiges, and

grays, the painting projects the subdued tonalities of an overcast day where light filters through a blanket of thick clouds,

allowing for little warmth and no bright spots. That democracy,

or evenness, while perhaps truthful to the conditions Sisley

chose to render, works well with the lack of pretension that he

intended. Only the church steeple emerges as more important

than other elements, and even that appears to be the logical

outgrowth of the buildings on the left: its base is locked into

the last structure, its color is the same as most of the other

buildings, and its vertical thrust is preceded by the chimneys

silhouetted against the sky.

Monet also painted this busy street during his first year in

town, suggesting that it was one of those urban spaces a landscape painter new to the area could not resist. Steeped with the

enchantment of the past and yet thoroughly au courant, it was

the kind of scene that had been depicted so often it had become

a cliché. Sisley tried to raise his work above the commonplace

by giving it a modern cast. Not only did he make objects in the

picture seem plastic and immediate, not only did he focus on

the lack of interaction among the figures, he also emphasized

the physical evidence of his artistic decision making. The

sharply defined curbs, cornices, and window treatments all stress

the recessional pull of the picture. The simplification of the

façades of most buildings, too, draws attention to their planar

geometries and abstract qualities as opposed to their peeling

paint or stucco, which might have interested a lesser artist.

Note as well how much Sisley relies on thick independent

strokes of paint. The immediate foreground is depicted with a

remarkable array of diagonal touches, some zigzagging and

snakelike, others flat and heavy. The sidewalks are generally

more broadly painted, the houses more broadly still, although

the façades are enlivened by many smaller, abbreviated touches.

The different surface treatments remind us of the artist's hand

and mind at work. They also make us aware of the visual

stimuli the site offered Sisley and how sensitive he was to their

variety. By adapting a range of painted marks, Sisley makes the

surface of the canvas much like the scene itself, highly idiosyncratic and unfixed, but genuine and palpable. His strategy

extracts his painting from the clutches of the traditional and

ensures its physical and metaphorical stance in the present.

54 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

6
Catalogue 55
7

Gustave Caillebotte

The Promenade at Argenteuil

1883

oil on canvas

65 X 82(25

5

/8X 32/,)

Private Collection

This painting is a vivid touchstone for impressionism's

dedication to the proposition that light, atmosphere, and particular moments were worthy subjects for high art. It is also

a rewarding reminder of the movement's uncompromising

intelligence and novel achievements. It has the mark of an

original, appearing truthful and unembellished in every respect.

Anticipating the work of twentieth-century artists such as

photographers Paul Strand and Walker Evans, it appears

to be informed simultaneously by the accomplishments of

Renaissance masters like Giovanni Bellini and seventeenthcentury view painters such as Gerrit Berckheyde. Like all of

the impressionists, Caillebotte had one eye cocked on the past

and the other trained on the future.

The painting crosses centuries and media as easily as

Caillebotte traversed the Seine from his house in Petit

Gennevilliers to render this site, which he selected with keen

appreciation for its nuances. It seems both unimportant and

brimming with significance, a place that people would pass

by without stopping and at the same time one that held special

meaning. The beauty of this ambiguity is that the artist refuses

to resolve it; we are obliged to explore the picture and decide

for ourselves. Caillebotte makes sure that we can begin that

process readily. He clears the foreground of any impediments

and links the tree-studded area on the left with the street on

the right by color, light, and texture. Only the segregation of

the shadows and the darkened curve of the curb in the center

indicate that the two are separate—another subtle touch.

Caillebotte enhances the impression of openness by reducing

View of the Boulevard Héloïse, 1999

the number of elements elsewhere in the scene, while minimizing action or movement. Everything seems distilled,

weighty, locked into position: the trees on the left have clearly

been planted by municipal order, a wall beyond them closes off

the scene with cool authority, and buildings assuredly fill the

background on the right.

The buildings are wonderfully solid. Highly geometric,

they seem immutable, either resisting or absorbing the intensity

of the unfiltered noonday sun. So strong and consistent is the

sunlight that it bleaches the colors of the façade and makes the

hand-lettered advertisements—Chuffart Maçonnerie, Buvette

du Marché, Ecurie et Remis—almost appear to melt. If the

owner is not asleep or away, the light has likewise caused him

to close the shutters, their green slats making the yellow-baked

walls of the house seem only hotter. No wonder the two men

on the left sit on a bench under the shade of the trees and the

woman in the foreground carries a parasol. The sun is blindingly bright and probably oppressive, which may also explain

the relative emptiness of the site.

Normally the area would have been livelier. Caillebotte

stands in an opening in the wooded promenade near the Seine

looking northwest toward the Boulevard Héloïse, one of the

most important streets in Argenteuil, which runs on a slight

diagonal across the canvas. By limiting the number of houses

and commercial buildings shown along the street, the artist

reduces the urban character of the scene. This is the opposite

of what Monet and Sisley did when they painted the same

thoroughfare from farther west near the end of the promenade

(cats. 4 and 5). They maximized the city feeling of the boulevard, using the straight lines of the curbs and long rows of

houses and trees.

By taking a simpler and more circumscribed approach,

Caillebotte makes his picture equally complex, especially

in terms of details. The three trees on the left, for example,

are different in age, height, and shape. The wall along the

street varies markedly from one point to the next, alternating

between solid and open sections, grillwork and pillars.

There is every reason to believe the scene existed just as

Caillebotte has depicted it; the buildings still stand today and

attest to his accuracy (see photograph at left). This implies

that he was attracted to the site at least in part because of its

straightforward but peculiar qualities. These are epitomized

in this odd pair of buildings. The primary structure is turned

to the side so that its entrance does not face the street. Then

its addition is shoved right into the middle of its façade, blocking what would have been windows on the upper story and

56 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue 57
the door and windows on the ground floor. The roof of the

addition slices into that of the main structure, descending on

an angle that ignores the original roof. The windows of the

addition are of a different design from those of the first house,

even sporting orange shutters, the complementary contrast to

the green ones on the left.

Contrasts abound in the picture. The left side contains trees

and figures, while the right is virtually empty. The left is activated by shadows, while the right is quiet and uninterrupted.

The right also claims more sky than the left. Among other,

more cunning distinctions, the figures are divided by gender

and position, with the men sitting in the shade between two

trees in front of a series of pillars, and the woman standing in

the sun close to one tree, her back to us and her upper torso

and parasol superimposed on the largest section of unbroken

wall in the background. At the far right Caillebotte includes

two fluttering flags, but he crops them so radically that we do

not see the pole to which we presume they are attached. He

makes the absence of that pole more acutely felt by planting a

tall slanting pole in the middle of the scene. This pole likewise

holds two flags, but while one flies energetically like the

two on the right, the other hangs limply on the opposite side

halfway up the staff.

Caillebotte finds ways to mitigate some of these contrasts.

As the pole gently leans to the left, it overlaps the corner of an

upper-story window so that the limp flag hangs just below

the edge of the roof. The pole bisects that section of the roof

before rising to the same height as the tree to its left. The tree's

foliage repeats the triangular shape of the roof. On the right

the orange shutters recall the clay liners of the chimneys of the

main house, while the gray lintel above the newer windows

extends to the left and meets the darker gray cornice of the

original structure. The isolated woman is linked to the men by

a shadow that runs along the edge of their bench to intersect

her at the waist. Finally, the daring arc of the curb in the center

echoes the curving shadow above it. The curb also begins at a

point along the bottom that is on axis with the house above.

And it ends on the right in line with where the gate begins.

That gate ends where the shadow below it stops.

These minutely constructed relationships hold the painting

together much as do the intense light and the omnipresent

evidence of the artist's hand on the surface. All bear witness to

Caillebotte's mastery of his craft and his impressive ability to

suggest the multifarious aspects of modern life in a scene of

deceiving simplicity.

Detail, cat. 7

5

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

8

Claude Monet

The Promenade at Argenteuil

c. 1872

oil on canvas

50.4 x 65.2 (i97/8 x 25/8)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

When Monet began this serene, light-filled painting of the

tree-lined promenade at Argenteuil—sometime in the late

spring or early summer of 1872—he had been a resident of the

town for less than a year. Having left Paris for the pleasures of

the suburbs in the early winter of 1871, he had not painted

many views of the place he would call home for most of the

coming decade. He was only beginning to acquaint himself

with its charms, as one senses in this meticulously ordered

scene. It possesses the air of contented discovery and seems to

be the product of a focused individual in tune with the world

around him. It is in many ways a picture of perfection.

There is nothing extraneous in this painting, nothing that

disrupts the flow of one area to the next, nothing that seems

out of position. Even the light appears to be measured in just

the right amounts. The composition too could not be set down

with more rigor or sensitivity.

The sandy path along the Seine leads into the scene past a

feathery bush on the left and a grassy bank that slopes down to

the water. The outline of the path is irregular, with the left side

bending out, then in, then out and in again, mirrored in its

movements by the tufted grass to its right and by the natural

curves of the shoreline. The right side of the path follows a

straighter line, implying greater municipal attention, as does

the formal row of trees. A turreted house in the background

seems a storybook ending.

The trees stand tall and stately, beginning at the right edge

of the canvas and stopping where the promenade meets a raised

section of the bank. Although uniformly vertical and rather

densely foliated, the trees are spaced sufficiently to allow several

bands of light to sneak through the screen and stripe the path.

Monet must have been dazzled by this horizontal/vertical

configuration and the contrast of light and dark, for he indulged

himself and used a rich impasto to make these strips of light

the most eye-catching elements in the painting. They are rendered in extraordinarily lush yellows and pinks.

The bands of light modulate the recession of the path, but

the borders of the promenade converge on the house and the

smaller buildings to its right. For today's viewer, this might

seem unusual, for the smaller structures are part of a business,

a fact that is made undeniable by the industrial chimneys

silhouetted against the sky. Mimicking the turret of the house

and the trunks of the trees, the smokestacks remind us that

this site was distinctly modern. It was a setting where labor and

leisure, work and pleasure coexisted. Monet may have opted

to depict the scene on a Sunday, the only day of the week when

work ceased, for the chimneys are not puffing smoke. They fit

almost ideally into the landscape, framing the house and rising

alongside the turret spire to define a triangle that ends at the

point of the peninsula on which they stand.

The placid, glasslike wedge of the Seine echoes the triangular promenade; together they complement the nearly square

expanse of sky, allowing heaven and earth to be sublimely

balanced. On the river two boats are under sail, both poised

in front of the soft green stretch of trees on the lie Marante,

which was encircled by the Petit Bras of the Seine. The boats

and the calm sky reinforce the beauty of the moment Monet

has captured and the glories of the area.

That Monet painted this site soon after he first arrived in

Argenteuil makes considerable sense. It embodied everything

one might want from suburban living. He included several

figures among the trees to the right to reaffirm that point.

And he returned nearly half a dozen times during that initial

year and again in the last summer he spent in the town

(see cat. 52). It clearly held special meaning for him, as is amply

evident in this iconic canvas. It may have affected his dealer

Paul Durand-Ruel in a similar way, as the painting was part of

a group of works that this farsighted supporter of the impressionists purchased in 1872 barely after the pigments had dried.

60 
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9

Alfred Sisley

The Bridge at Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

38.7 x 61 (15/4 x 24)

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee,

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hugo N. Dixon

Understated and unassuming, this view down the Seine to the

highway bridge at Argenteuil is an image of great delicacy.

Both immediate and timeless, the painting invites us to relish

the specific while celebrating the general. It suggests multiple

possibilities—about life and looking—and strikes innumerable

poetic notes, but it is thoroughly grounded and materialistic.

It draws us into the scene yet reminds us of our isolation, just

as it underscores the allure of nature and at the same time

upholds the human presence in the landscape. It is a fine

example of how the past can inform the present and how

modernist art arose from a considered investigation of the craft

of painting and a sympathetic immersion in this developing

Parisian suburb.

Compositionally, the picture could not be simpler. It is

almost evenly divided between earth and sky. The land is an

integrated patchwork of triangular shapes rendered with a

lively brush but a restrained palette. Sisley fills the foreground

with the waving, unkempt grass of the riverbank at Petit

Gennevilliers; Argenteuil is across the Seine to the left. He

places a pathway in the middle of the scene, its undergrowth

flattened by foot traffic, leading the viewer into the distance

with the orderliness of a classic Renaissance perspective system.

The path then bends to the right just before it meets a

white-hulled sailboat that lies at anchor by the water's edge,

encouraging us to continue down the river. We encounter

other boats as well as the boat rental house, which is neatly

locked into the conjuncture of the highway bridge, the river,

and the bank. Superimposed on this intersection is a man

walking up the bank toward two houses on the right carrying

a set of oars. He appears on the rabatment, a vertical line that

defines a square with the left side of the canvas, locating him

and this nexus of forms in consummate harmony with the rest

of the painting.

Such artful alliances occur throughout the work. The man's

oars angle to the left to define a triangle with the bank and

various masts by the boathouse; they then descend to the right,

appearing to touch a man and woman who stand in front of a

low-lying building. That structure, continuing the line of the

bridge and the boathouse, meets a sizable poplar—the largest

vertical element in the scene so far. Behind a wooden fence

to the right rise two houses that are visually connected by a

screen of background trees linking the rooflines and by a

lighter-colored gate that overlaps the corner of the left house

but serves the more substantial house at the right.

Note also how Sisley has the dock parallel the bridge and

end near the bow of a rowboat that itself parallels the bank

and points upriver like the path. If an imaginary line were

drawn across the painting connecting the tops of the hills on

the left with the fence on the right, it would touch the top of

the mast of the white-hulled boat at the end of the path, which

bisects the arch of the bridge behind it before just nudging the

right side of the cloud above. This is sensitive picture making

by an accomplished artist.

The sky also bears the mark of Sisley's artistry. It is so

gently painted that it appears to have been breathed onto the

canvas, setting the tone for the soft light that fills the landscape.

But it is the clouds that make this sky a worthy descendant

of Perugino's. Beginning on the left, an arabesque of cottony

clouds just above the horizon rises, falls, then rises again in

response to the rhythm of the hills and houses below. Four

smaller clouds that soar above the third cloud on the left form

an open parallelogram, a configuration of parts more often

associated with stars in a constellation than celestial vapors.

The hazy scrim of clouds in the center of the sky helps to pull

the background forward and to make the almost impossible

set of clouds more or less believable.

What is finally most distinctive about this picture is its

play of light. While the whole scene enjoys the warmth of the

sun, which is behind us to the right, Sisley does not indulge in

a particularly dramatic use of its powers. Thus it is surprising

to notice the strokes of orange yellow paint on the crests of the

first two hills in the background and the same hue, though

of greater intensity, on the middle spans of the bridge. Sisley

is consistent in his distribution of highlights and shadows,

engendering an authenticity that is evident in his brushwork

as well, a tangible testimony to the intangible interaction of his

hand and mind.

Carefully wrought yet completely forthright, classically

imbued but loyal to the realities before him, this painting

identifies Sisley as an artist determined to find a way to

shape the elements of his era into a narrative of significance.

Edouard Manet, one of the most forceful personalities of his

time, appreciated these efforts. He purchased this painting

directly from Sisley and kept it until his own death in the

early i88os.

Catalogue 63
10

Gustave Caillebotte

Laundry Drying

1892

oil on canvas

105.7

 x 15°'% (415/8

 x 59•/»)

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

Standing on the Argenteuil side of the Seine and looking

down the town's celebrated promenade and Champs de Mars,

Caillebotte depicts a strictly aligned row of trees on the right

and a broad stretch of river on the left. A line of laundry rises

then falls as it moves through the scene to end in the distance.

A bench on the grass in the middle parallels the dusty walkway

along the Seine and the two green-shuttered washhouses that

float at the water's edge. The landscape is uninhabited. There

are no boats or people, indeed no birds or even clouds in the sky.

It is middle to late morning; everyone is presumably at work,

as is Caillebotte, who appears to relish his solitude as he paints.

On one level this painting is all about the light of this particular day and the ways that Caillebotte makes it manifest.

It begins with color. He paints the two earthen paths with

high-value beiges that stand out from the vivid lime green of

the grass in between. He employs a creamy white pigment to

define the façades and roofs of the laundry houses, which makes

them appear so boldly illuminated that they become insistently

planar. The sky is charged with an equally consistent glow,

emanating from the amount of white that he has mixed with

his blues, while the darker foliage of the trees is etched with a

deeper shade of the same lime green as the grass below.

Caillebotte is particularly attentive to the framing power

of the majestic chestnut trees and how they interact with the

light. He radically crops the first tree on the left, leaving only a

Gustave Caillebotte, Le Pont de l'Europe, 1876, oil on canvas,

Musée d'Art Moderne du Petit Palais, Geneva

sliver of its trunk and a few individual branches. The leaves

on these branches catch the light and cast a dappled pattern on

the trunk. The denser canopy of foliage on the right pulls the

light into its recesses so that variations in color transform its

sculpted forms, notably in a splash of the darker lime green

just above the path. Light bathes the stolid trunks of these

trees on the sides that face the river, descending to form pools

at their feet.

The laundry provides Caillebotte with the ultimate vehicle

for suggesting the mysterious presence of this light. Like a

foil to the rigid planes of the washhouses and the land, the

seemingly continuous band of drying shirts arcs like a streamer

or a bleached snakeskin sail. The tops of the shirts and their

fluttering arms receive the greatest amount of light, almost

appearing to have been starched by the sun. This effect is

increased by Caillebotte's decision to begin the clothesline in

pale blue shadow on the left and to have it rise to its greatest

height to the right of center where the last shirt is entirely

illuminated. Curiously, the pure lead white of the shirts is

maintained into the distance, just as their size drops immediately after the first tree on the right and stays the same to the

end instead of becoming progressively smaller in accordance

with perspectiva! realities. They remain independent touches

of paint with no claim to description and no identity other than

being unmixed color.

These white touches are in essence unfiltered light, but

they are set in context and given their brilliance by the deep

shadows throughout the scene, particularly in the canopy

of foliage on the right. Similarly, the dark green and purple

shadow that runs across the canvas in the immediate foreground provides a strong contrast to the sunlit paths and grass

beyond; the shadows under the bench intensify the light that

strikes the seat; and the façades of the laundry houses gain

their prominence from the darker brown band of their hulls.

The water and sky jointly benefit from the olive green of the

trees on the lie Marante across the river.

Just as the light is measured by its opposite, so too is the

charm of the place made plain by its emptiness. With no one

present, we can freely explore—as Caillebotte does—its

many delights. By including very few elements in the picture,

Caillebotte invites us to concentrate on each one, endowing

each with its own color and shape. The single tree on the left

seems distinct from the other trees, though they are all one

species; the two paths are also related but individualized, as
Catalogue 65
are the two laundry houses; the bench stands completely alone,

with no duplicate. Even the shirts, although supposedly alike,

are slightly different one from the next.

Caillebotte is just as calculating when he composes the

painting. Although he divides the scene into what initially

appear to be large simple sections—paths, grass, river, trees,

and sky—he alters or interrupts each part. The nearest pathway, for example, is crossed by the horizontal shadow in the

immediate foreground, then divided lengthwise by the staccato

strokes that mark the laundry's shadows, which extend into

the middle ground to meet the darker horizontal shadows of the

chestnut trees. The latter inexplicably stop where the laundry

ends, allowing the path to continue as a light-filled form. This

path is not exactly triangular; it jogs to the left after the first

tree. In like fashion the bench interrupts the continuity of the

path by the shore, while the washhouses break up the shape

and flow of the river.

It is not that Caillebotte was out to avoid purity and precision in this painting. On the contrary, one senses those concerns

throughout, from the crisp edges of his forms to the almost

mechanical quality of his brushwork in certain areas, especially

in the grass. It is most apparent in the physical divisions of the

canvas: the river begins on the left at the midpoint of that side;

the path ends at the same point on the right. The midpoint on

the right is also the vanishing point for the various orthogonals

in the scene: the borders of the grass, the line of the bench, and

the roof of the first laundry boat. Even the laundry itself seems

to lead to that point, as if it were both mocking and supporting

the highly regulated lines of Caillebotte's traditional perspective

system. Caillebotte does not permit those waving shirts to float

through the scene without similar control. The point at which

they peak marks the rabatment, an imaginary vertical axis that

forms a square with the left side of the picture.

These relationships and adjustments were highly conscious.

Caillebotte worked them out in at least three studies that preceded the painting. Smaller, less rigorous, and seemingly done

on site, they affirm Caillebotte's reliance on traditional methods

of constructing finished pictures from trial essays. Together

with the imposing size of this canvas, they also confirm that

Caillebotte, now in his early forties, wanted to produce an

ambitious painting along the lines of some of his masterworks

of the 18705 when he was in his twenties. He must have had

Le Pont de l'Europe of 1876 especially in mind (see illustration

on p. 64), as it shares a variety of compositional devices with

this work and offers a close relationship of height to width,

although it is slightly larger in both dimensions. Laundry Drying

could have been its suburban pendant.

Judging from its many incomplete passages, however, and

the lack of a signature, we know that this impressive picture was

not finished, which may explain why it was never exhibited or

sold during Caillebotte's lifetime. Despite this fact, the painting

amply reveals the artist's ingenuity in isolating one of the

central tenets of impressionism—light—and raising it to a

startlingly new level of vivacity and meaning: this painting is

not just about the power of the sun; it is about the ways the

sun illuminates a more complicated world.

This site is a place of work as well as pleasure. We do not

see the laundry house employees at their tasks, but the results

are obvious. Comparison with Le Pont de l'Europe makes it

clear that the strong perspective lines and sense of anonymity

so often associated with Paris are equally operative here, giving

the picture an urban quality that its natural setting would

otherwise belie. The notion that laundry could be beautiful

and merit elevation into the realm of high art poses another

contradiction, one that other impressionists—Degas, Morisot,

and Pissarro—had embraced in previous years by depicting it

on various occasions. People did not come to Argenteuil to see

laundry hanging along one of its most picturesque pathways,

but it was there.

Caillebotte celebrates these contradictions, as he does the

light. They defined modern life—and a thriving suburb like

Argenteuil—just as they were essential to modern art. It is

their energy that makes contemporaneity so vital and that

offers painters like Caillebotte and his impressionist friends

the opportunity to reconsider the fundamentals of their craft.

It is in pictures such as this that Caillebotte asserted their

heartfelt intention to make art from life, and to allow the

moment to be eternal.

Detail, cat. 10

66 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

II

Claude Monet

The Boat Basin at Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

60 x 80.5 (235/8 x 31 Y*)

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, legs du comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911

From his position on the main promenade at Argenteuil under

a brilliantly lit, cloud-filled sky, Monet presents all the delights

of the modern suburban landscape. Men, women, and children

stroll up and down the sun-striped path beside an elegant row

of chestnut trees, while others lounge on the grass; sailboats

skim across the blue and white waters of the Seine, skirting

steamboats that spout streams of smoke; ladies with parasols

negotiate a gangplank to the bathhouse at the right, while a

sailor waves from a rowboat by the shore. Everything is glorious, charming, and desirable.

Each element in the painting is painstakingly arranged and

scrupulously rendered, underscoring Monet's powers as an

artist and the humanly imposed rationale of the place. The path

leads logically into the scene, its clearly defined, irregular

borders complementing the carefully spaced light and shadow

that Monet distributes along its inviting expanse. So guileless

is the path's recession into space, it could have been formulated

by a Renaissance artist discovering the powers of perspective.

The grassy bank and boat basin serve as counterbalancing

shapes. Together with the path, they create a pattern of interlocking parts, above which hangs a broad sky.

Nowhere is Monet's compositional acumen more apparent

than in the way he links the left and right sides of the scene,

employing the horizontal shadows across the path and bank,

the line of the bridge in the background, and the sublime sweep

of the trees. The trees recede to a point that joins the end of

the curving shoreline, thus forming a continuous arc on the

picture plane that extends from the upper left to the lower

right. Monet reinforces the latter connection by making

the foliage on the trees cover approximately as much area as

the grassy bank and by echoing the curve in the clouds.

Monet's enthusiasm for Argenteuil is not only expressed

in the rich collection of pleasurable pastimes he depicts in this

seductive painting, it is also implied in the dazzling light that

enlivens the scene, in the heightened palette, and notably in

the densely textured surface of the work. The path and bank

are defined with overlapping horizontal strokes of dry, matte

pigment. The foliage on the trees is suggested with dabs of

paint that have no consistent orientation, appropriate for the

fluttering leaves they describe. The clouds are the most broadly

rendered, with large arcing strokes that contribute to the

strong sculptural presence of these evanescent forms. More

striking yet is the top left region of the sky. Initially it appears

to contain distant, thinner clouds that drift high above the

cumulus ones. But it is merely the primed canvas and a few

beige, white, and spare blue strokes. This unpainted section

continues along the top edge in a narrow band all the way to

the right corner, where Monet abandons even the dragged

blue pigment.

Such sketchiness is in keeping with our inherited sense of

impressionism as a fresh, direct, spontaneous style, but it is

inconsistent with the rest of the painting. Monet's decision to

contrast one procedure with another in the same work was

highly conscious. Not only does the less finished area add

depth and diversity to the sky, but it draws attention to the

intensity of everything else in the scene. More important, it

underscores the fact that, despite the impression of a captured

moment, the painting is an artful construct that requires us to

suspend our disbelief and submit to the cunning of the artist.

In 1872 when Monet painted this picture, he believed in

the illusion of its discrete parts creating a kind of perfect whole,

repeatedly proclaiming its validity in other equally measured

images. Although conscious of its conceits, just as he was of

his own artistic inventions, Monet had come to Argenteuil to

settle down, raise a family, and enjoy the benefits of his developing talents. This painting is his testimonial to the potential

of the present and to the novel vision he had for French art.

It is grand and generous, open and celebratory, exemplifying

Emile Zola's description of Monet's affection for "nature that

man made modern."

68 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
C

tl

6
12

Gustave Caillebotte

Boats on the Seine at Argenteuil

1890

oil on canvas

60 x 73 (23

 5/s x 28 K)

Private Collection, U.S.A.

They sit quietly but restlessly at anchor, these pleasure craft—

restrained but poised for action. Sailboats dominate the lot;

four fill the foreground, varying in size and design. Their

colorful reflections ride the ripples of the calm but flowing

waters of the Seine to the bottom of the view, while their masts

soar upward and out of the picture at the top. The bowsprits

of two of the boats stretch beyond the right edge of the scene,

linking the four craft as a group to three of the four boundaries of the canvas.

Behind these interlocked vessels sits a packet boat, distinguished by its stubby but substantial smokestack, which offers

a contrast—in shape, form, and color—to the long, slender

masts of its wind-dependent mates. It is visually held in place

by the outstretched boom and erect mast of the sailboat on

the left. Behind the packet boat are two other sailboats whose

masts flank its cream-colored stack. A tighter fleet edges its

way into the picture at the far left, its masts silhouetted against

the sky like those of its foreground counterparts, establishing

a syncopated rhythm that activates the view.

Caillebotte was an avid boater, so it is not surprising

that, even after seven years of living and working in Petit

Gennevilliers and Argenteuil, pleasure boats such as these

would be the focus of his picture. Similar craft are featured

in no fewer than thirty-five of the paintings he completed

between 1882, when he first moved to the area, and 1894,

when he died in the house he built on the shores of the Seine,

a two-minute walk from the vantage he assumed to paint this

stunning canvas.

As can be sensed from this lively image, human activity

on the water was a subject close to Caillebotte's heart. Every

element in the scene appears immediate and physical, whether

it is the boats and their reflections, or the water and its movements. Even the light seems tangible. These effects are aided

by the moment Caillebotte has chosen to render; it is nearly

noon, and the sun is so strong and the air so clear that the light

bakes all of the forms, heightening their plasticity. The sides

of the masts turn buttery yellow; the façade of the house on

the right becomes stark white, just like the building to the left

of center; the turreted structure farther to the left is almost

sculpted by the rays of the sun. The furled sails of two of the

foreground boats are also conspicuous in their brilliance, while

the deck of the one in the center glows with intensity.

Caillebotte's engagement with his subject is apparent

from his sensitive alignment of certain details. The sailboat on

the left, while cradling the packet boat, seems to stabilize this

vessel with the angled form that supports its own boom and

that ends where the hull of the packet boat disappears behind

the furled sail. The mast of the same boat coincides with a

corner of the turreted house in the background. The bowsprit

of this boat arcs out and appears to nudge the stern of the boat

to the right.

Caillebotte repeats this subtle linkage elsewhere. The

bowsprit of the black-hulled sailboat in the middle ground, for

example, seems to touch the mast of the larger boat in front of

it, which in turn contacts the stern of the orange boat behind

it. The masts of these three right-hand boats are almost evenly

spaced, as evident in the rectangles of sky that they carve out

and in their reflections in the water; moreover, the one on the

left overlaps the white structure in the background by as much

as the one on the right misses the last house in the scene.

To underscore these relationships, Caillebotte has the mast

and bowsprit of the largest boat in the middle cast a triangular

reflection like that created by its companion to the left, although

larger, like the boat itself. The hypotenuse of this reflection is

bisected by the reflected mast of the orange boat, which also cuts

through the barrel-shaped buoy. The bowsprit of the middle

boat returns the compliment, piercing the reflection of the

orange boat's hull. Finally, the mast of the orange boat falls

on the rabatment, forming a square with the left side of the

canvas; and the bowsprit of that craft exits the painting at

precisely the midpoint of the right side.

An almost mesmerizing web of stays among the foreground

boats draws attention to Caillebotte's draftsmanship and the

apparent accuracy of his rendering. But it also introduces some

enigmas. Note the vertical line to the right of the orange

boat's mast, which descends from an unseen source. In fact it

is attached to a crossbar near the top of the mast, which is cut

off by the top of the picture (a similar arm is visible on one of

the boats at the far left). The stay on the orange boat runs not

only parallel to the mast but directly along the corner of the

background house, an alliance that may seem fortuitous but

was clearly planned. Like the scene as a whole, it testifies to

Caillebotte's sagacious eye and his desire—like Monet's before

him on this very site—to stitch together the disparate elements

of modern suburbia to create an ideal place, one that could still

satisfy the urges of an increasingly demanding public.

70 
Catalogue 7

1
Alfred Sisley

Barias of the Seine at Argenteuil

1872

oil on canvas

38 x 56 (15 x 22)

Private Collection

Deceptively simple, this fastidious painting conveys the artist's

innocence as a first-time visitor to this appealing site as well as

his sophisticated understanding of compositional strategies.

Combined with the exquisite color harmonies and the soothing

arrangement of forms, these qualities attest to the ways that

Argenteuil could both inspire and instruct. They also explain

how Sisley transforms a place of ordinary charms into a celebration of the benign and the beautiful.

Light falls evenly and consistently throughout the scene,

warming the façades of the buildings on the right, filling

the sail of the boat on the river, and molding the clouds that

hang so weightily just above the horizon. The blues of the

sky beyond these clouds seem to exude a kind of internal glow,

as does the edge of the left bank where the light catches the

ragged underbrush and silhouettes it against the cool blues of

the water.

But it is the composition that is particularly satisfying

here. Like his seventeenth-century Dutch counterparts, Sisley

lowers the horizon, which makes the land seem to recede deep

into the distance and the sky to become enormously expansive.

Despite its spaciousness, however, the landscape appears intimate. Despite its diversity of forms, the whole seems justified,

complete, and authentic.

In large measure these effects derive from Sisley's vantage

point and his decision to spread the bank generously across the

foreground. We are able to enter the picture on an even keel

because he makes the land appear relatively fiat and parallel to

the horizon. He also places the pathway virtually in the center

of the scene, another traditional device of his Dutch forebears.

The path draws us quickly into the space, its bending, wedgelike shape adjoining an analogous area of grass. Suddenly, it is

clear that the land is not level, that instead it slopes gently but

decidedly down to the river, following the arc that Sisley establishes from the horizon on the left to the lower right corner.

At the center of that arc a man is standing next to a woman

who is seated in the grass. As one of the few vertical elements

in the picture, the figure of the man echoes the poplars on

the left and the boat on the right, suggesting a harmony of the

human and the natural. He is located so that his head rises

midway between two distant shores of the river. This propitious

balance is evident elsewhere—the red-roofed houses on the

left emerging from the land, or the clouds above the sailboat

dipping at the mast and then rising again over the structure on

the right, their lyrical movement following the profile of the

poplars whose tops rise and fall with a similar cadence.

Those poplars and the red-roofed houses stand by the

Petit Bras of the Seine. The hills in the distance therefore are

those of Saint-Germain, where the river bends to the right to

form its third loop on its way north from Paris to the English

Channel. If Sisley turned around in this painting, he would

have been looking back toward the highway bridge and the

boat basin, the focus of his equally distilled view of Argenteuil

from this same visit with Monet (cat. 9). These two paintings

are thus pendants in many ways, a relationship one senses not

only in their shared location but in their kindred compositional tactics, handling, and effects. In each Sisley includes a

single sailboat navigating the Seine, a spareness not found in

most impressionist paintings of the site. But most other depictions also capture a more boisterous mood, which suggests

that restraint and tranquility may have been particular characteristics of the Paris-born Sisley. Argenteuil clearly encouraged

a wide latitude. As a breeding ground for individuality and

novel thinking about art, it could not have been a more fertile

environment, and Sisley responded warmly with these images

of hushed sublimity.

7

2 THF

IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

1

3
Catalogue 73
Claude Monet

The Seine at Petit Gennevilliers

1872

oil on canvas

47.9 x 63.5 (i87/«x 25)

The John M. and Sally B. Thornton Trust

To most people of Monet's day who lived in Paris and the

suburbs, Argenteuil was a site for weekend leisure, for strolls

along the town's winding streets and riverbank or boat rides

up and down its unparalleled stretch of the Seine. They could

go on excursions to the outlying fields, which produced various

crops, including grapes that were used to make an extremely

modest wine, le vin d'Argenteuil. Asparagus grew there as

well. It was hailed as the best in the region and was one of

Argenteuil's most celebrated exports.

Few people would have taken the train from the Gare

Saint-Lazare to Argenteuil (or walked to the town, as some

hearty souls were wont to do) to see a place such as that

depicted in this unusual painting. Sweetly scented air and

vacation enjoyments seem far from its primary offerings.

While boats bob on the water at the river's edge, they appear

displaced or nonfunctional, their intended use as pleasure craft

significantly compromised by other forces.

, This impression is partly generated by the absence of

humans in the scene. It is also the result of the slightly gloomy,

overcast sky, which is rendered in long, loaded strokes of blue

and gray that rush on diagonals out of the picture. And it is

advanced by the steamboat in the background, which spews

out a spiraling trail of coal blue smoke. A deeper shade of the

ominous clouds above, the smoke twists toward the foreground

as if to proclaim the takeover of the river by newer, mechanized

craft with associations to industry and labor. This fact is asserted

once again by a second cloud of smoke that emerges from

behind the tip of the peninsula and just breaks the horizon.

The waves of light and dark in the Seine, which are described,

like the sky, in broad swaths of opaque pigment, also contribute

to the sense of unease. They seem to roll anonymously by us,

suggesting a kind of passing.

Yet the scruffy bank is what ultimately confirms the implication that other, nonpicturesque forces are at work. It appears

to possess nothing that would interest the contemporary pleasure

seeker; there are no trees, grassy areas, or places to sit. There

is not even a path to entice a visitor to walk somewhere else.

In addition, it is described with a mixture of drab colors—

browns, grays, and olive greens—all laid down with a heaviness

that denies the joy Monet found in other areas of Argenteuil.

Extending into the scene as a narrow but ponderous triangle,

the bank looks like the tail of a large water beast, floating

motionlessly on the river, dividing earth and sky.

That Monet chose a nondescript, nontraditional site for

this painting reinforces his willingness to take risks, as it was

novel and daring to immortalize such a place. The work also

bears ample evidence of his intelligence. He organizes the

elements on the bank, for example, with a care that their

apparent disorder disguises. Consider the humble structure that

sits on the left. It lies so low to the ground and its walls and

roof look so flimsy that it seems to be near collapse. But the

angle of the roof parallels the streaking clouds above, as underscored by the timbers that hold down its tin or cloth covering.

Its apex is also securely located in the middle of the tall, rustcolored structure behind it, while its right side ends just where

the façade of that house and a boat on the bank begin.

In front of the shack lie various scraps of wood, their

vagrant lines mimicking the light patterns on the river. Behind

it hovers a more open extension, while above it protrudes a

triad of long poles silhouetted against the sky. The poles mark

the conjuncture of the shed and the red house, whose taut

lines and erect stance make the shed appear more ruinous while

at the same time lending it support.

Just to the right of the house rise the masts of other boats,

presumably afloat on the other side of the point. Monet carefully aligns them with the edge of the house. He also has the

mast of the boat on the water in front of the shed divide a

second, smaller background house in half, falling precisely

between its two purple chimneys. This mast cuts the whole

scene into two parts with its continued reflection in the water.

Monet repeats the vertical thrust of this mast in the distant

poplar to the right and again in the mast of the boat at the end

of the bank, whose triangle of stays is itself echoed in the boat

at the far right of the canvas.

In the disarray of the site Monet has clearly found rationale,

in the motley, something beautiful. The combination of opposites is particularly appropriate in this painting, which shows a

boatbuilder's shop near the end of the boat basin at Argenteuil

(the house in the middle ground belonged to the builder, the

poplars in the background identified the start of the Petit Bras

of the Seine). The boatbuilder's labors are manifest in the

boats moored along the shore as well as others pulled up on

the bank, all of the latter without their masts. His workplace,

depicted in roughly handled paint and less-than-alluring colors,

is where new pleasure boats were repaired or produced, such

as those that populate so many of the impressionist paintings

74

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

M
C

tl

75
of Argenteuil, a transformative process not unlike Monet's

own task of taking dissimilar elements and shaping them into

a desirable and orderly whole.

Like his impressionist colleagues, Monet constantly invites

us to experience that process, as he openly declares his painterly

means, simplifies his compositions, and extracts harmonies

where they may not appear to exist. But in a painting such as

this, he reveals those aims with an uncharacteristic forthrightness, which is as welcome as it is reaffirming.

Detail, cat. 14

76 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

Auguste Renoir

Portrait of Monet

c. !873

oil on canvas

65 x 50 (25% x i95/«)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

He sits at a desk or table reading a book, his head and upper

body bent forward over his text. Nothing disturbs his concentration. Nor does anything distinguish him as the heralded

impressionist painter who, with his adventurous colleagues,

was in the process of radically altering the course of French

art. The thirty-one-year-old artist merely puffs on his pipe,

seemingly absorbed in a book.

The simplicity of the image is deceiving, however, as the

portrait reveals much about an individual whom all of the

impressionists admired. It is as prescient as it is legible, as much

a metaphor for Monet the avant-garde artist as a likeness

sensitively rendered by the former porcelain painter he had

called a friend for nearly a decade.

Renoir has marshaled the various elements in his painting, completed sometime during Monet's inaugural year at

Argenteuil, to considerable effect. First, he locates his transplanted Parisian confrere in the middle of the view, parallel

to the picture plane, allowing him to fill more than threequarters of the area. With little else in the scene, Monet is the

unmitigated focus tof attention. He is also substantial. He

rises like a pyramid from the narrow rectangle of the table,

his arms almost touching the sides of the canvas and his head

reaching nearly to the top. There is no teetering, no lack of

conviction. Monet is clearly someone to be reckoned with.

His formidable character is conveyed by his sheer bulk and

by his simplified silhouette, which greatly increase the power

of his presence. Renoir uses both the blocky outline of Monet's

heavy black jacket and the lighter, bluish background to set

off his figure and make him appear more sculptural. He also

contrasts his handling of paint, rendering the jacket with big,

bold strokes and the background with shorter touches of a

less-loaded brush. The amount of paint on Monet's jacket

grounds him and contributes to our sense of his engagement

with his text, whereas the thinner, more ethereal background

suggests the expansiveness of his thoughts.

It is difficult to determine how spacious that background is.

No chair, floorboards, or architectural elements calibrate the

recession. A shadow on the right implies that there is not

much room between Monet and what one assumes is a wall

behind him. But the shadow itself is mysterious. Given its

sharp angle, it does not seem obviously related to Monet. Yet

nothing else in the picture could have cast it. Cézanne would

have appreciated this lack of resolution.

Equally obscure is the form on the table to the left. Is it

a scarf or the end of a tablecloth that has been pushed aside?

Is it the shadow of some object outside the picture? The latter

seems unlikely because of the color Renoir has laid over the

dark shape. There is something vaguely humorous about the

image, as it recalls a shadow-puppet animal with a large snout

and open mouth or a medieval gargoyle.

Regardless of what it may be, the cryptic form is related to

the shadow on the wall. Both are enigmatic, one entering the

scene from the lower left, the other exiting toward the upper

right. They thus create a diagonal across the surface of the

canvas. A more subtle connection between them begins where

the left form touches Monet's bent arm. This is precisely where

the lighter edge of his cuff meets the table. That edge arcs up

to join the similarly colored lapel of his jacket, which itself

meets the curve of his beard. The line of his beard continues

along the curl of smoke coming from Monet's pipe, which

leads to the highlights on his left shoulder, which themselves

angle upward to meet the shadow emerging from behind his

back. Why these shadowy forms are linked is as curious as

their presence in the picture, but Renoir was too purposeful

for them to be there by accident.

Among other ambiguities is the position of Monet's left

hand. It could be under his right forearm or under the book,

but it could also be resting on the table or tucked into his chest.

And what about the book? The raised page appears smaller

than the others, just as the right half of the book seems to be

out of proportion to the left. The rough edges of the pages

identify it as a popular publication, which accords with the

simple wooden table, the unadorned background, and the spare,

compressed setting. It also suits Monet's informality, his

unkempt hair and beard, even his clay pipe, a type favored

by artisans, sailors, and workers, not the middle or upper

classes. It was in relation to such popular culture that Monet

defined himself.

The book, which emanates light, has captivated Monet.

That he ponders its words and implications is indicated by his

furrowed brow, focused gaze, and the tilt of his head. He seems

to be looking and thinking at the same time—as he does when

he is painting, a process we generally do not see, and a discipline

not often associated with impressionism. In the 18705 critics

thought that the impressionists were only concerned with

the superficial and the spontaneous and that their art was a

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

J

5

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Catalogue 79
i6

Auguste Renoir

Portrait of Camille Reading

c. 1873

oil on canvas

6i.2X 50.3 (24 /s x 19/4)

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,

Williamstown, Massachusetts

mindless reaction to the exterior world. The seriousness of the

exploratory-evaluative process Renoir depicts here is ultimately

that which produces culture, with all its stops, starts, and

unknowns. Renoir emphasizes that questioning in the dramatic

play of dark and light throughout the picture, particularly on

Monet's face and jacket.

We move back and forth between these highly calculated

moments in the painting, just as the impressionists vacillated

between acceptance and denial, partisanship and independence.

Renoir suggests this activity in the pipe and smoke: on the

right the smoke curls out of the bowl of the pipe in idiosyncratic forms; on the left, from the corner of Monet's mouth

and the dividing line of the pipe's slender stem, the exhaled

smoke comes out in a completely different mode, having been

reformulated by the artist as he sits and thinks.

This brings us back to the two shadows and the meaning

of this painting of a painter immortalized without a single

tool or product of his profession in evidence. The first shadow,

a protosurrealist form, may be a metaphor for the artist's

imagination, an announcement of his persona or imminent

arrival. In the nineteenth century such flights of fancy had

to be put to the test. Forms or experiences had to be studied,

analyzed, and adapted to some rationale, like a dream or a

vision that an artist, or writer, wanted to express. That process

occurs here in the middle of the canvas, involving the book,

the pipe, and Monet's intensity. Out of the book come ideas,

just as the pipe emits its genielike smoke. In the end, they are

absorbed and translated into other forms—in the case of the

shadow on the right, ones with strong geometric biases, much

like the book itself.

Given Monet's tendency in the early 18705 to reformulate

the world into a series of harmoniously related forms, Renoir

was perhaps being remarkably perceptive. But such harmonies

are inexplicable, as an artist is never sure where an idea may

lead or how the world will be reshaped into art. Renoir suggests that Monet was not only aware of that dilemma but fully

willing to engage its complexities. In this insightful portrait

Renoir could not have paid his friend a more fitting tribute.

From some of the earliest writings on impressionism comes

the often-repeated assertion that the artists who made up this

avant-garde group were penniless. We are reminded time and

again that this was because they were rejected by critics and the

art establishment, which forced them to survive more on their

personal devotion to their art and the companionship of their

fellow painters than on the contemporary art-buying public.

Various facts support these claims. The radical new painting that the impressionists developed in the i86os and 18705

did not receive immediate, broad-based approval; clients did

not flock to their studios to purchase their canvases; and newspapers did not devote space to their ideas. Money therefore

was often in short supply. Some artists, like Renoir, took advantage of parental largess, living or eating at home. Others, like

Monet, moved in with more successful or privileged friends,

such as Frédéric Bazille. There was plenty of credit ducking,

borrowing, and fretting, Monet being the most vocal and

most resourceful about these concerns, especially during his

years at Argenteuil.

What, then, are we to make of this ravishingly beautiful

painting of Monet's wife, Camille, and its revelry in luxurious

materialism? Nothing would seem further from the inherited

histories of the movement. Poverty is unthinkable; worries

absurd. Charles Baudelaire's poetic evocation of luxe, calme, et

volupté is realized here with unabashed abundance.

Camille reclines on a sumptuous divan that is covered

with a richly decorated material. So ornate and tactile is the

fabric that it almost appears to have been embroidered. With

its two huge pillows and generous expanse, the divan occupies

the largest amount of the space in the painting. It looks soft

and inviting, just the place to lounge and read a book, as

Camille is doing.

With her feet crossed and dress neatly spread out, Camille

leans back against a pillow that has been raised higher against

the wall to accommodate her pose. She seems fully at ease and

completely a part of the setting. The fabric of her dress is as

elaborate as that of the divan and equally floral, while the blues

of her sleeves and skirt are taken from the color of the background. Renoir heightens the impression of her immersion in

the space by aligning the left side of her gown with the end of

the pillow on the floor and her decorative hem with the top of
l

8i
the divan's ruffle. The dark piping on the pillow behind her

extends up from her right arm and turns just in line with the

hair falling across her forehead, an arabesque that is mimicked

in the curve of the book.

If there are worldly concerns that haunt her husband or

the friend who is painting this portrait, they are not in evidence.

The mood seems relaxed and casual. The pillows are scattered

informally, one even serving as a footrest; the divan is cropped

and asymmetrical; Camille is placed off-center, her dress

slipping out of the picture on the right side. Most carefree of

all, three fans on the wall appear to float into the scene like

untethered balloons, turning so that their handles are oriented

in slightly different directions.

Camille seems oblivious to her surroundings, so engrossed

is she in her book. But how do we reconcile her self-indulgence

and Renoir's visual feast with the recorded tales of the impressionists' hand-to-mouth existence? How do the plush divan

and Camille's elegant dress accord with Monet's supposed

poverty? In actuality, by 1873, when Renoir painted this picture, Monet had begun to earn significant sums. The Paris

dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought numerous paintings from

Monet in 1872 and 1873, which, when combined with other

sales the artist realized in those years, raised his income to

12,100 francs and 24,800 francs, respectively. These were substantial figures. During his six years in Argenteuil Monet

continued to earn an average of somewhat more than 14,000

francs a year, permitting him to live very comfortably, despite

his periodic cries for help.

The rich gown Camille wears in Renoir's painting was her

own and was probably purchased with this windfall. She wears

it in two other portraits Renoir did of her the following year,

both of which also include a similar divan, which must be the

same piece of furniture seen in the present work. In addition

to the divan, the fans and the rope rug appear to have belonged

to Monet. He depicted various fans in \\isjaponnerie of 1876,

including the one on the right in this painting by Renoir. These

objects testified to Camille's (and the artists') cosmopolitan

interests and the current rage for things from the East, which

began in the eighteenth century with chinoiserie (implied in

Renoir's depiction of the divan fabric here) and moved from

Chinese to Japanese influences in the late i86os. The fans were

cheap throwaways, called uchiwa fans, which makes their

presence a little incongruous in a work that is filled with such

sophisticated trappings.

The fans may have been a token of Renoir's appreciation

for Monet's hospitality, as it was customary to hang three

together as a housewarming present. But the most common

place they appear are in ukjyoe prints of Japanese courtesans.

This adds a note of impropriety to the image Camille projects,

an intimation that is repeated in the informality of her pose.

Instead of merely being modern decorative elements, the fans

assume more Freudian overtones, their handles pointing

toward Camille and casting shadows on the wall that emphasize their sculptural quality. Although Camille is buttoned up,

the long blue spine of her dress can become equally suggestive,

drawing attention to the sensuous contours and weight of her

gown. Renoir's caressing brush and the intricate skeins of

paint on the custard yellow section of her costume contribute

to this sense of intimacy. So does the heron depicted on the

pillow beside her. At once exotic and common, the heron

can be easily mistaken for a crane, a widely recognized symbol

of promiscuity.

How are we to understand a painting that began as an

adoring portrait of Monet's wife and ends as something else?

Renoir poses but does not resolve the enigma, leaving us with

an image that is at once clear-cut and contradictory, much

like modern life, much like impressionism's apparent histories

and agendas.

Detail, cat. 16

82 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

Claude Monet

The Garden

1872

oil on canvas

6

3-5* 79-4 ( 25>< 3T /^)

Private Collection

This delicate, poetic picture breathes the air of great contentment. It also embodies many of Monet's painterly concerns of

the early 18705. Chief among them are the evocation of strong

natural light, the sense of pure serenity, and the impression of

immediacy. All of these are realized with assurance in this

unassuming view of Monet's Argenteuil backyard, where they

become mutually reinforcing, a balance that is rare in art, as it

is in life, particularly in the later nineteenth century.

Monet addresses these concerns with a combination of

subtlety and forthrightness, beginning with the brilliant light

that streams into the scene from directly overhead. Clear and

forceful, the light endows everything it touches with warmth

and vitality, making this reserved, spatially circumscribed

painting a paean to its powers. The flowers and foliage are

transformed, their petals and leaves seeming to sway to internal

rhythms that suggest the intensity of the moment and the

beauties of the day. The path in the right foreground and the

grass in the center provide a solid footing for their revelry,

while the azure blue sky, dotted with only a few faint clouds,

shimmers overhead.

Although this celestial expanse gives the sense of infinite

space, it occupies less than a quarter of the view. Most of the

canvas is devoted to two flowering lilac trees standing in front

of a thicket of green that extends unbroken across the scene

on a slight diagonal. Like the two elegant women who sit

placidly between them, the lilac trees are at the same time

different and alike. The one on the left has a wider, stouter

trunk and a fuller top. The one on the right appears more

youthful and energized, its thinner trunk twisting as if engaged

in a dance; it rises in the middle of a circular bed that has been

carved out of the lawn. The arching branches of these trees

form parentheses around the women before reaching up to

meet the sky and catch the full benefit of the light. The bowerlike recesses underneath are cast in shadow, although patches

of scattered light find their way into even the deepest pockets

of this undergrowth.

The two women are both dainty and substantial, a complement to the lilacs and the potted plants. They are boldly painted,

with peach beiges and light blues that make them stand out

against the lime green of the grass. The yellow hat of the woman

on the left and the bright white parasol of her companion

attract particular attention, as they contrast so strongly with

the shadowed area behind them. The women also humanize

the landscape, making clear that these trees have been cultivated for aesthetic reasons, much as were the flowers in the

ceramic pots. The pots themselves were among the half a

dozen that Monet purchased during his self-imposed exile in

Holland in 1871. With their floral designs and soft bluish white

backgrounds; they imitate Chinese export porcelains and are

reminders of Monet's worldliness, interest in the decorative arts,

and desire to make his backyard a diverse aesthetic environment.

The pots are casually arranged. In addition to their

irregular spacing, all boast unique designs and plants that

have flowered differently. The two on the ends have lush blossoms, while the one in the center does not, echoing the lilac

trees on either side of the green undergrowth in the background. Monet unites them by having them stand like sentries

along the curve of the path. Behind them the two women sit

on the ground rather than a bench or chair, underscoring the

informality and intimacy of the scene. No middle-class woman

concerned with her station in life would have been caught in

such an unladylike position. Yet the women appear prim and

appropriate, like the well-tended flowers that surround them.

The connection between the figures and the garden is

essential to the picture, as it recalls the long-standing feminine

character of nature while suggesting the desirability of this

suburban setting. The garden's appeal would have had particular

resonance in 1872, given the disasters of the Franco-Prussian

War and Commune insurrection. The peace Monet has captured, the restraint of the women, even the needlework in

which one of them is engaged affirm a return to the grace and

gentility of France that was so lacking during the previous

l'année terrible, as Victor Hugo called the horrors of 1870—1871.

In addition, these thoroughly contemporary figures evoke

associations with the women who populated the eighteenthcentury fêtes galantes of Antoine Watteau and his followers.

And they occupy a space that is like a modern hortus conclusus,

or closed garden, which is traditionally associated with the

Virgin Mary. While Monet provides a potential exit on the

right, he enhances the site's splendid isolation through the

THL IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGLNTEUIL

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84
Catalogue 85
mass of the foliage behind the figures and through the absence

of intrusions. The women themselves exude an innocence

that hearkens back to their sacred counterpart. But we are

made to feel excluded from this gathering, as the women do

not acknowledge our presence.

This painting was one of Monet's first views of his

Argenteuil garden. Settling down after almost a decade of

itinerant existence, Monet found wonder and satisfaction in

this unpretentious backyard. He could afford such comforts,

for he was earning more than Parisian doctors and lawyers in

1872 and he plowed much of his income back into his garden,

a consistent source of renewal during his years at Argenteuil.

When he moved to Giverny in 1883, he constructed the

ultimate earthly paradise, but the garden at Argenteuil was

where it all began, something one senses in its dazzling mixture of simplicity and sophistication, confidence and naïveté.

Detail, cat. 17

86 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

i8

Claude Monet

The Artist's House at Argenteuil

1873

oil on canvas

60.2 x 73.3 (23 K x 28/8)

The Art Institute of Chicago,

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

To say that light was a staple of the impressionists is to state

the obvious. No other group of painters so relentlessly pursued

this fickle phenomenon; therefore no other movement is as

closely identified with its broad range of effects. Even during

the flowering of impressionism at Argenteuil in the 18705,

light was widely recognized as the artists' defining concern.

It is nonetheless surprising to encounter this candid view

of Monet's backyard. Completed in the summer of 1873 and

depicting the grounds of his first home in Argenteuil, located on

the rue Pierre Guienne, this work radiates an almost palpable

luminosity. So vivid are the colors that it seems as if Monet

consciously plumbed each for its most intense physical components, then wedded one with another in a manner that

allowed each hue to stand forcefully on its own. As a result, few

canvases from the period equal the simple yet stunning effects

he achieved here. Ironically, few are quite as inscrutable either:

the forms can be easily read, but their meanings are elusive.

Monet graciously invites us into the scene, with its spacious

foreground embracing a wide beige stone dust path that is

interrupted only by the artist's signature at the right. With its

hard-packed surface and crisp, converging edges, the path

defines a broad trapezoidal shape that runs the length of the

house and closes in a boldly illuminated bed of flowers. Only

at the far end of the garden and along the left side of the yard

does sun strike directly. Most of the path and the entire house

are cast in shadow. Monet even mixes various blues in the beiges

of the path to decrease its luminosity. Yet he fills the space

with so much light that the upper story of the house, with its

warm, soft yellows, acts as a kind of substitute for the sun.

Other inversions are just as curious. The stone dust path,

for example, is essentially a stage, but Monet has emptied it

of virtually all incident that might capture the eye or stir the

imagination, aside from his son, Jean. The boy is the sole actor

on this proscenium, standing startlingly alone, his back to us.

He holds a hoop in his hand, but he is as motionless as the

flowerpots on either side (trophies from Monet's self-imposed

exile in Holland in 1871 during the Franco-Prussian War and

the Commune).

Except for Jean and the trapezoid of stone dust, the garden

teems with life. Flowers stretch forward, leaves tremble on

the trees, ivy scales the façade of the house and spreads out in

either direction, eventually climbing over the eaves and disappearing from the picture. In their profusion, these vines almost

obscure a woman at the door who steps outside, presumably

to check on the child. An expansive blue sky hangs over the

scene, fluffy clouds filling its lower reaches, more wispy ones

soaring to the top, seemingly buoyed by the purity of the air

and the clarity of the light. The small cloud directly above

Jean is particularly lively, as if it possesses the spunk that the

boy suppresses.

Jean's stillness seems strange. Why is he so removed?

Should we read his stance as a rebuff? Or has Monet simply

depicted an instant when his son has stopped what he was

doing and contemplates his next move? Has the woman at the

door told the boy something he did not want to hear? Has he

become bored posing for his father? The painting as a whole

prompts other questions. Can it be merely coincidental that

the smallest trees with the thinnest foliage stand just at the

end of the house, the most massive element in the picture,

allowing the sky to show through? Why do these delicate

saplings lean to the left when the older, larger tree leans to the

right? And why has one Delft pot been separated from its

mates and isolated on the left?

These questions, like the scene itself, seem to involve

relationships—human, natural, and aesthetic. The painting

offers certain nineteenth-century ideals of beauty, harmony,

and material splendor from which one might create a longedfor union, but something is missing. In the emptiness of

Jean's space, even in the distilled perfection of the shapes

and forms of his surroundings, a tension tugs at these ideals,

pulling desire away from fulfillment and pitting intimacy

against independence. Monet's notions are both clear and

cryptic, which suggests that he may be asking what is real

and how art can bear witness to the tangible as well as the

mysterious aspects of life, particularly modern life that has

been so complicated by the forces of change.

88 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue 89
Auguste Renoir

Monet Painting in His Argenteuil Garden

1873

oil on canvas

46 x 6o(i8x 23%)

Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut,

Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell

He stands before his easel, his back slightly arched, his feet

firmly planted, his right arm extended toward his canvas with

a brush delicately balanced between his thumb and forefinger,

about to touch its surface. In his left hand he holds a host of

other brushes like a bouquet of unruly stems. On his forearm

he balances his palette, locking it between his thumb and the

crook of his elbow. Below his three-legged easel lies an open

paint box and a thin white triangular form, most likely an

umbrella to block the sun. He is the model of the plein-air

painter—in the world, fully engaged, completely equipped,

concentrating, erect, in charge.

It appears that Monet is painting a subject on the other side

of the picket fence, perhaps the dahlias. These magnificent

flowers begin at the left in a frothy wave that crests just after

passing a multistory, blue-shuttered house in the background.

They then descend toward Monet with lively impatience, their

blossoms stopping in the middle of the scene, while the tangle

of green continues on past him, touching the top of his easel.

Monet's brush is pointed toward the upper reaches of his

canvas, however, which suggests he may be rendering something higher in his sight line than these flowers: the house

perhaps, or the sky. In any case, the region beyond the fence

is more stimulating than the relatively empty space he occupies.

Renoir emphasizes its allure not only by the subtle alliance

of the dahlias and the easel but also by the fence, which cuts

the scene in two. The humble, seemingly hand-hewn pickets

barely restrain the energy of the opposite side, separating yet

uniting the two realms. Indeed, the foliage spills over this

boundary to tumble into Monet's space and engulf one leg

of his easel. The fence then continues toward the right to

intersect Monet at his waist, literally pinning him in place—

a helpful ploy given his position so far from the center of this

asymmetrical composition.

Monet's space is stripped of distractions or visual interest;

it is a place of work, not leisure or play. Monet is dressed for

work. Always inclined to a certain stylishness, he sports a

round black hat and a dark jacket trimmed with velvet at the

collar and wrists. The jacket is cut short, not like the frock

coats most middle-class men wore indoors or out. Monet owned

a more elegant coat; he was photographed in it when touring

Holland only two years earlier. But the jacket he wears here

resembles the traditional blue smocks of the working class.

His unpretentious dress emphasizes Monet's seriousness, a

quality evident as well in his intense focus on the subject he is

painting. He is unfazed by the wind that blows through the

scene, for example, although it causes the foliage and flowers

to bend while lifting the corners of his jacket in a humorous

but naturalistic way. Likewise, he seems content to be working

on an overcast day, which keeps everything except the flowers

in a kind of chromatic check. Monet was known to be a hard

worker and remarkably productive, the result not only of

his enviable dexterity but also of his heartfelt engagement

with his task. That task of course, like Renoir's, was to transpose external realities into art. In Monet's case, as Renoir in

particular knew, that meant wrestling discordant elements into

a distinctive but orderly whole, not unlike the picket fence.

How confident Monet appears as he paints in his garden,

although his easel looks relatively fragile and his canvas is of

modest size. Unlike so many of Honoré Daumier's caricatured

painters, Monet stands back from the easel and looks beyond

his painting while his hand independently translates what he

sees. The canvas itself is a willing partner in this process, as

it leans back to receive the next touch of his brush. His pose

underscores his determination, and his smartly cocked wrist a

corresponding flexibility and sophistication.

That Renoir faithfully includes the jumble of buildings in

the background, with their assorted sizes and shapes, makes

it clear that Monet is not working in some remote site, as his

Barbizon predecessors did. He is in the middle of town, with

people walking by (note the two in the center of the scene) and

houses crowding in on all sides. This was his chosen world.

Like Renoir and the other impressionists, Monet had opted to

immerse himself in the here and now and to extract from the

contrasts between the natural and the man-made, the cultivated and the constructed, that which spoke forcefully and

poetically about the times in which he lived. According to this

deeply sympathetic portrait by his friend Renoir, he was quite

at home among this competition of forms and amply capable

of ordering them in meaningful ways, a distinction history has

also awarded him.

90 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

1

9
Catalogue 9

1
20

Claude Monet

A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias

oil on canvas

61 x 82.5 (24/8 x 32/2)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gift (Partial and Promised) of Janice H. Levin, in Honor

of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Monet's first house in Argenteuil sat on a sizable piece of

property just down from the railroad station on the way to the

river. The garden that accompanied the house was immense,

approximately 2,000 square meters. It bordered two undeveloped parcels of land, which must have made it seem even

grander. The house itself was substantial and undoubtedly

appealing to the newly transplanted Parisian artist, his new

wife, and young child. But the grounds must have been one

of its primary attractions. During his first year in Argenteuil

Monet painted five pictures of the garden (see cat. 17), none

of which was true to its full breadth or splendor. In the summer

of 1873

 ne neai~ly doubled that number, most of which revel

in the glories of this suburban setting.

Of the second group of paintings, this richly impastoed

work is one of the most animated. The ground is covered with

a plush quilt of fallen flower petals. A formidable array of

dahlias bursts with brightly colored blossoms. The trees on

either side arch toward the center of the picture, their branches

seeming to bend in the wind, their leaves to tremble. Scattered

clouds allow only intermittent glimpses of the blue sky.

The one thing that is solid and immutable is the threestory house that rises behind the dahlias. It does not possess

the puckishness of the flowers, but it is hardly staid, thanks

to its asymmetric façade, eccentric rooflines, and contrasting

chimneys. Slightly off-center, it reigns over the scene, with

windows like watchful eyes and its right edge defining a

square with the left side of the canvas, making it appear

logically located.

The same sense of order prevails throughout the picture,

despite the sustained vitality of its surface and the dynamism of

the illusion. Like the classical landscape artist Claude Lorrain,

Monet frames the scene with tall trees, divides it into counterbalancing areas, and invites the viewer to enter the space by

emptying the immediate foreground of any encumbrances.

Monet quickly compromises that access, however, with the

thicket of dahlias, which surges into the view, pushing more

than halfway across the picture plane to occupy nearly a quarter

of the scene. Despite their aggressiveness, the flowers are

carefully coordinated with other elements in the painting.

Beginning at the midpoint of the left side, they follow the line

of the trees behind them, cresting about midway between the

leftmost tree and the house. They then descend to the right,

following the arc of the right-hand tree and ending on axis

with the right corner of the main portion of the house. These

syncopated rhythms find echoes elsewhere, such as the three

thin yellowish trees in front of the house. They too imitate the

curve of the dahlias, but they also bracket the façade of the

house, with the tallest one in the center rising directly between

the two blue-shuttered windows.

The dahlias are both contained and countered on the

right by the open space and expansive lawn that lead past the

tangle of flowers to a fence, where a woman in white stands

with a man dressed in black. Although discreet, especially in

comparison with the dahlias, these figures are easily readable,

down to their individual postures and contrasting hats. They

are not out of scale, as is evident from their positions relative

to the fence. Nor are they out of place. On the contrary, they

lend purpose to the site. Without them, the scene would be

disconcertingly empty. The flowers would seem abandoned,

the house cool and distant, the bending trees and overcast sky

mournful and disconnected.

In the end, this painting celebrates suburbia, not some

bower beyond the reaches of civilization. Nature, in this

modern version of the world, is to be nurtured and appreciated

in one's own backyard, something Monet's rented property

in Argenteuil allowed him to experience on an extended basis

for the first time. Little wonder that the painting seethes with

life, that he applied his medium in so many ways, or that he

juxtaposed such bold colors in the garden while using memorable contrasts of light and dark in the sky. They reinforce the

joys of living in Argenteuil and provide the rationale for his

decision to move there.

But the picture poses some persistent questions. How

accurate is it? What lies beyond the edges of the view?

A painting by Renoir (cat. 19) provides partial answers.

Presumably executed at the same time as Monet's, that iconic

landscape depicts Monet working on a canvas in the same

backyard. But in Renoir's image the town of Argenteuil plays

92 

1873
Catalogue 93
a significant role. Indeed it presses in on the space, transforming Monet's idyllic garden into an ordinary part of a real

suburban neighborhood. The jostling houses Renoir depicts

lie just to the right of Monet's bowed tree, as the blue-shuttered

house and tree are clearly the same in both paintings.

It is by no means certain that the dahlias were Monet's own,

as they do not appear in other views of his garden. He may have

borrowed them from his neighbors on the other side of the

fence, exercising his artistic license. Although they differ somewhat in the two paintings, the yellow blossoms tend to be on

top with the red ones below, and both groups are astonishingly

dense. Monet painted no other picture of the blue-shuttered

house, which suggests that Renoir's homage to his friend

may depict Monet in the process of painting^ Corner of the

Garden with Dahlias. Unlike Renoir, Monet was determined

to discern fundamental harmonies in Argenteuil, at least

during his first years in town, when he still firmly believed in

the suburban ideal.

Detail, cat. 20

94

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

21

Auguste Renoir

Madame Monet and Her Son in Their Garden at Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

50.4 x 68 (i97/H x 26K)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

If thé destruction of inherited hierarchies was one of the

impressionists' chief accomplishments, then this portrait of

Camille Monet and her son Jean ranks as one of the most

poignant examples of how that end was achieved. There is little

about it that members of the Paris art establishment in the

1870$ would have recommended and little that other sitters

would have found complimentary or worth preserving. Yet

its originality and apparent lack of decorum, however disturbing at the time, now clearly distinguish the painting.

As a portrait, the work contains none of the genre's traditional trappings. Eschewing the formal or dignified pose,

Camille sits nonchalantly on the grass, her chin supported on

her left hand like many of Ingres' female sitters or Rodin's

later Thinker. She recalls Monet's own image of her in his great

Luncheon on the Grass of 1865—1866. In Renoir's startlingly

fresh image, her full white dress splays out around her, falling

out of the picture at the bottom. Seven-year-old Jean leans

back against his mother even more casually, his legs akimbc

his right arm nestled in a fold of her dress. One eye is focused

on the viewer; the other seems to drift. Camille casts her eyes

aside, looking down to the left.

The rooster makes a curious companion. He stands on

the same plane as Camille but is totally incompatible. His erect

stance assumes an almost self-conscious air, as he is presented

in sharp profile like a properly bred Renaissance patron. No

less perplexing are three other birds that appear to be in the

background. Renoir contradicts any logical reading of this

Edouard Manet, The Monet Family in Their Garden at

Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum

of Art, New York

space, tipping up the grassy area so precipitously that it fills

the whole right side of the picture. Thus the smaller birds

cannot be located specifically in the illusion of the scene. He

positions a tree directly behind Camille so that its trunk seems

to grow directly out of her back, on a scale that makes no sense.

Is this the way one would want to be immortalized? The

ambiguity continues with the sliver of a flowerbed at the top

left that is shown at a scale too large for the fowl but not

entirely inconsistent with the figures. We are therefore left in

some confusion.

Renoir's brushwork does not help to clarify spatial relationships. While he separates one form from another with crisp

outlines or decisive changes in color, he does little to define

overlapping forms or three-dimensionality. He renders the

grass with irregular brush strokes moving in so many directions

that it is impossible to judge its recession. And he suppresses

indications of light and shade that could suggest textures and

contours in the landscape.

A companion painting by Manet done in the same garden

at the same time (see illustration at left) proves that Renoir's

view was remarkably accurate. Manet depicted Camille more

frontally and Jean looking to the right. He included the voluminous dress, relaxed poses, stumpy tree, green grass, and

geraniums (tended by Monet himself). The fowl appear in

the guise of goslings. Despite his shorthand, Manet made the

space more rational than Renoir did. He employed bands of

light and dark to establish a measured recession that leads to a

recognizable background and a glimpse of sky.

In comparison to Renoir's view, Manet's is not only more

conservative, it is also larger and more worked, which may

have prompted the older artist's supposed quip to Monet after

inspecting Renoir's canvas: "He has no talent, that boy! Since

you are his friend, tell him to give up painting!" Given the

support Manet had previously demonstrated for Renoir, this

often-repeated remark would surely have been made in jest.

But it hints of competitive relationships among these innovative

artists. That the two could devise such different scenes from

the same material also attests to their insistence on invention,

which is evident in myriad details, particularly in the artful

use of the tree. Camille and Jean were posing, not merely

lounging around. The casualness of each scene was thus carefully orchestrated, just as the apparent spontaneity was quite

deliberate. It was with determination and clear-mindedness

that Renoir and Monet attacked the inherited traditions of

French art, altering its course in both form and content.

96 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue 97
22

Claude Monet

Frost on the Plains of Colombes

oil on canvas

52.5 x 72 (20 K x 28 y»)

The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Japan

It is late autumn. The ground is covered with frost. A chill is in

the air. The trees have turned. The Paris crowds have retreated

to the city, allowing the fields to regain their traditional tranquility. Standing alone on this spacious site just across the river

from Argenteuil, Monet paints a picture that seems especially

sensitive to these conditions and the transitional qualities of

the time of day he has chosen to render. It also bears witness to

the emptiness of the place and the reveries it prompts, underscoring Monet's ability to find meaning in the mundane.

Soft orange-yellow light streams into the scene from the

left, caressing the land and its forms while suggesting the onset

of the winter sun's long rays. The earth awakens to its touch,

as do the façades of the houses, which warm with each moment.

The trees on the right bend like lithe dancers, their leafy tops

melding into a single rounded shape that arcs upward before

being cropped by the canvas' right edge. As with the orange

roofs of the houses below, the foliage on the trees contrasts

with the thinly painted breadth of blue sky that Monet allows

to dominate the landscape, its faint cloud cover filling more

than two-thirds of the picture plane.

The humble rectangle of land is more articulated than is

the sky. It is divided into several parts—a small wedge below

the horizon on the left, a ridge that curves toward the middle

of the foreground, and a flatter section to the right. Although

all three contain many of the same colors, each is painted

differently, reflects a distinct quality of light, and gives varying

emphasis to the hues and values. The differences are particularly noticeable in comparing the ridge and the large flat field.

The former is rendered with thicker, longer, horizontal touches

of paint laid down with greater bravura and more lead white;

the latter is more uniformly defined, its brushwork more

restrained, its colors deeper in tone and less luminous. These

contrasts are heightened by the rich blue shadow that slices

through the scene, separating the two areas while sculpting

the contours of the landscape.

This shadow, sweeping from Monet's signature at the lower

right to the solitary trees on top of the ridge, is central to the

painting's dramatic perspective. It makes the land seem to rush

deep into the distance, past the houses and trees on the right

to end at the low horizon, which is punctuated by more houses

and trees. Two factory chimneys also mark the meeting of

earth and sky, spouting trails of smoke. The speed with which

the land appears to recede is increased by the vacancy of the

site and the other diagonals Monet employs: curved on the left,

straighter and more regulated on the right, all of which add

visual complexity to what otherwise could have been a rather

ordinary scene.

Monet finds much else to celebrate in this unpretentious

landscape: the bracing isolation of each building, the alternation of the contrasting groves of trees, the alignment of the three

white houses in the distance on the left against the background

screen of trees on the lie Marante, the bisection of that foliage

by the clump of trees at the crest of the foreground ridge, even

the vertical accents of the factory chimneys echoing the trees,

their smoke paralleling the horizon. Monet insists that we

recognize the individual characteristics of all of these elements,

but he implies by their relative simplicity that each relies on

the next for its effect and that the whole is more than the sum

of its parts. Painting traditionally depended on incident, so by

reducing one of the medium's primary appeals, Monet reveals

his modernism. He also suggests his enthusiasm for his new

life in the suburbs, where each experience was novel and

noteworthy, each part of the landscape a marvel to behold.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the interaction of

the light and the soil. Tangible, persistent, and clear, the sunlight burrows into the ruts and hollows in the land, attempting

to melt the nearly frozen upper layers before pushing farther

into its depths. The earth responds, heaving slightly or spreading apart, changing color in the process. With each shift in

hue or brush stroke, Monet reminds us of nature's vitality and

his own versatility in capturing its wonders. Over the years

he spent in Argenteuil, Monet would experience profound

change, which would ultimately compromise his innocence

and his opinion of this suburb. But for the time being, the

delights of early morning prevail, with all its intimations of

promise and reward.

8 SSOSS AAG

1873
C

tl

99
2

3

Gustave Caillebotte

The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers

1884

oil on canvas

54 x 64.7 (21 /4 x 25/2)

Fondation Corboud, on permanent loan to the

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

Vibrant fields of yellow and orange daffodils stretch across the

foreground of this dramatically composed view of the plains of

Gennevilliers across the river from Argenteuil. Their proximity

to one another makes their bold colors and the impasto of their

petals particularly pungent. Shimmering with light, they

recede sharply into the distance between fresh green fields on

either side. Prefiguring abstract shapes that Kazimir Malevich

would devise thirty years later, these assertive geometric forms

rise high on the picture plane to end considerably above the

midpoint of the scene.

At the horizon we encounter the only vertical accents in

the landscape: a band of trees that proceed from the left edge

of the canvas to a point above the junction of the orange and

yellow fields. There the trees become more distinguishable as a

series of poplars that continues out of view on the right. Above

this orderly arrangement of forms hangs a sky that has been

subjected to an equally rigorous geometric sensibility and made

into a strict, virtually uninterrupted rectangle. No cloud disturbs

its surface, extending the expansiveness that the fields suggest.

Despite the division of the land into such legible areas, it is

surprisingly difficult to measure the space in this work. There

are no visual signposts, no repoussoir elements, no figures to

establish scale. Only the trees in the distance provide points

of reference, but they are too far away to be very useful. The

picture therefore captures the exhilarating but unnerving

feeling of our being part of a place and yet estranged from it,

of knowing where we are physically and metaphorically in the

world and yet unable to describe that position with assurance.

Other details contribute to this reading. The varied brushwork

not only emphasizes the individuality of the larger parts of

the painting but also implies that they are held together by

some rationale that is mandated from without and different

from what defines them. The absence of figures increases this

tension. It is evident that the foreground fields were plowed

and planted, but the presence of the person responsible is now

seen only in his handiwork. Assumptions are thus both confirmed and unanswered, while knowledge is only approximately

supported by perception.

These conflicting sensations are distinctly modern, a

product of the ways in which the world of the later nineteenth

century was increasingly ordered and understood by science

and technology and yet simultaneously made more confusing

by the expansion of knowledge, the dissemination of information, and the overload of experiences. No matter how well things

might be described, they were not always what they appeared

to be. And the closer one might think one was to truth, the

more elusive it became.

These contradictions, so close in kind to those of our own

moment, were largely based on the urban experience, at least in

nineteenth-century France. Rural people knew their environments on a relatively intimate basis, felt comfortable with them,

and took pleasure in the continuities of their time and space.

In Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas he claimed that "people

in the country [were] better than those in towns" and said we

should "envy their lot." For those who lived in the city, like

Caillebotte, the consummate cosmopolitan, the yearning for

continuities did not disappear. It was merely superseded by a

fascination with the faster pace of life and the risks and disjunctures produced. While sources of excitement, the contradictions

also offered more complicated ways of locating oneself.

In this painting Caillebotte may have taken us from the

Paris boulevards and apartment interiors he had depicted so

often in the i86os and 18705 to the light-filled countryside.

But he has not abandoned the essential urbanity of his hautbourgeois upbringing. The dictated order of his picture is a

highly personal strategy, not found with the same insistence

in the work of any of the other impressionists who painted in

Argenteuil and its environs. But of course none of them came

from the same privileged background as Caillebotte.

To his credit, Caillebotte understood his penchant for

imposed authority and ensured that it did not go uninterrogated, as is apparent here in the tensions he creates between

shapes, colors, brushwork, and spaces. Most ingeniously perhaps,

he suggests these fundamental philosophical inquiries—about

modern life and art making, knowing and sensing, earning

and wanting—in the physical character of the painting. Central

to the power and significance of this carefully considered

image is the strain of its vigorous forms against the shape of

the canvas itself, which is just ten centimeters short of square.

A square is not only an uncompromising shape but also one

that is basically ill-suited to landscape painting. Landscape

artists had long recognized that their genre was best served by

horizontal rectangles, just as portraitists preferred more sympathetic vertical formats. The former imitated the breadth of

the land, the latter the upright pose of a sitter.

A square format is unyielding, like some accepted hierarchy

or proven body of knowledge. Steeped in tradition and bound

by his roots, Caillebotte had a particular affection for strict

geometries, but like his impressionist colleagues, he also wanted

to carve new spaces out of the old, where independent thinking

and new formulas for understanding could coexist with the

inherited and the established. By turning to these fields so near

his newly constructed house in Petit Gennevilliers and rendering them so starkly against the forceful shape of his canvas, he

found the perfect vehicle for giving form to these struggles and

for envisioning the future while grappling with the present.

Detail, cat. 23

IO2 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

2

4

Claude Monet

Houses at the Edge of the Field

1873

oil on canvas

54 x 73 (21 /4 x 28/4)

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

This painting is a paradigm of how a simple scene can be made

sublime by Monet's keen eye and sensitivity to the effects of

harmonious contrast. The view is divided into three roughly

equal zones: one for the foreground flowers, one for the houses

and trees, the other for the windblown sky. Despite covering

a similar amount of the picture plane, each band could not be

more different. The foreground field is ablaze with color, a sea

of soft yellow flowers and blood red poppies, all rendered in

small, variegated touches. The sky is more limited in hue and

more broadly painted. It is also more dramatic, with its division

between the open and airy region on the left and the overcast

area on the right. Between these contrasting expanses rise the

houses and trees. They are welcome vertical notes in what is

otherwise a predominantly stratified scene. Two types of trees

enliven this band and link the earth and sky: thin, recently

planted saplings along the edge of the field, with fluttering

leaves that echo the flower blossoms; and larger, more mature

specimens in the background, with rounded, huskier forms

that mimic the shapes of the clouds.

The two smaller houses clearly emerged from a single

architect's drafting table, although closer inspection reveals

slight variations. In the one on the left, the central window in

the tympanum is a lighter shade of blue and is crowned with

rounded, not rectangular, molding; the lower right window

either does not exist or is blocked by shutters; and the front

door is shorter and wider, while its cornice between the first

and second story is a thicker, continuous white band, not two

separate stringers. The larger house on the far right is different

in color and design, but it continues the pattern of three groundlevel rectangular openings and sports the same salmon-toned

chimneys. The greater bulk of this house helps to close the

scene with appropriate authority, while the radical cropping

of the one on the left contributes a sense of immediacy.

This group of houses was located in the western part of

Argenteuil, with the Seine and promenade to the right. The

center of town lay straight ahead, designated by the church

spire, which parallels the verticals of the house chimneys and

repeats the peaked rooflines in a narrower format. This section

of Argenteuil was experiencing rapid development during

Monet's first years there, as were other edges of town. In fact,

the two smaller houses and the cropped one on the left had just

been built; their size and similarity suggest they were aimed at

individuals of modest means, possibly the increasingly mobile

residents of Paris who wanted a taste of the country.

The desire for a petit pavilion outside the city was widely

shared by residents of the capital, although it was also parodied

by cartoonists and by writers like Flaubert, whose Bouvard and

Pécuchet revealed the many, often hilarious, shortcomings of

country living. Monet himself was obviously not immune to the

dream of peace and repose beyond the urban din, for he too left

Paris for the pleasures of suburban Argenteuil. And initially,

like Flaubert's city-dwellers-turned-country-gentlemen, he

was delighted with his move. The town had many advantages:

fresh air, beautiful views, open spaces, and easy access to the

city. This canvas is therefore a testimony to Monet's enthusiasm

for Argenteuil and the phenomenon in which he was a willing

participant, namely the alteration of the countryside by the

force of change.

That force is felt throughout the painting: in the sharp

delineations between discrete areas, the dramatic light and

dark, bold color contrasts, and the way the houses encroach

so unrepentingly on the field that once covered their now

divided lots. That Monet could have painted such a picture

underscores his embrace of the new; other contemporary landscape artists would have thought the scene too insignificant.

But for the modernist Monet, meaning lay in the moment,

in the shifting beauties of nature, so evident here, and in the

changing values and landscape of his time.

Thus Houses at the Edge of the Field can be seen as a

modern version of great Dutch landscape paintings like Jacob

van Ruisdael's View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields or Jan

Vermeer's View of Delft, both homages to the artists' respective

seventeenth-century cities and icons of their kind. Monet's

painting affirms his belief that Argenteuil could enter that

pantheon and that he, like his heralded predecessors, could go

down in the history of art as having recognized its significance

and immortalized it in paint.

104 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

2

5

Gustave Caillebotte

Factories at Argenteuil

1888

oil on canvas

65 x 82 (25% x 32/4)

Private Collection

Under a churning sky of thick gray clouds sits a huge factory

complex. Its main buildings extend from the middle of the

scene to the far right, paralleling the even longer blue-gray

wall in front of them and the dark green and brown bank of

the river. Above these abutting geometric shapes tower six

tapered chimneys, which rise like rockets toward the top of

the canvas, while their reflections wriggle in the opposite

direction across the broad stretch of the Seine. Two large

houses to the left seem diminished by their proximity to this

sprawling industrial establishment, but they anchor their side

of the composition and act as metaphors for the human, something otherwise absent in this unconventional picture.

Argenteuil had never been represented as stridently as

Caillebotte renders it here. As the center of the development

of impressionism in the 18705 and a popular site for boating

and other leisure activities well beyond the end of the century,

it was generally portrayed as a more attractive place: washed

by sun-dappled waters, graced with flowing fields and rich

blue skies, animated by happy distractions from the rigors

of contemporary life. If a single view of the suburb could contradict this image, Factories at Argenteuil would probably

be the best candidate. There are no sailboats, no Sunday

strollers, no seductive light to enchant the viewer or disguise

the harsher realities of the town. Instead, with unabashed candor, Caillebotte focuses on these unglamorous factory buildings.

He chooses a vantage on the Gennevilliers side of the

Seine that maximizes the visual impact of the factory, moving

far enough to the right to see a second, low-lying structure

behind the first one inside the enclosing wall. Showing the right

View of distillery in Argenteuil, c. 1900

sides of these two buildings as well as the façade, he enhances

the plasticity of both and gives them a weightier presence in

the landscape. The same is true of the taller, tawny-colored

building that is perpendicular to the other two. Representing it

from two sides, he draws attention to its three-dimensionality.

Another similarly aligned structure behind this one would not

have been visible if Caillebotte had stood directly in front of

the complex. His position also emphasizes the intersection of

the two buildings closest to us. If he had moved downriver to

the left, they would have seemed more distinct, whereas here

the lower building appears to grow out of the taller one.

This subtle point is important, because it suggests the

factory's growth over time, as do the different sizes, designs,

and colors of the buildings. In perhaps the strongest witness

to this notion, the three tallest chimneys are spaced at almost

equal intervals, which makes them initially seem as if they are

all on the same axis; this in turn makes them appear to have

been conceived and perhaps constructed according to a single

plan. Closer study reveals that this was not so, however; nor

was it true for the three smaller and more irregularly located

chimneys behind them. Such evidence confirms that the plant

expanded as business developed, much as did Argenteuil itself.

This was in fact the case. The establishment Caillebotte

depicts is the distillery that sat near the eastern end of town, a

stone's throw from the railroad bridge, which is just outside of

the scene to the left. Converted from a glass-making factory in

1878, it expanded several times before Caillebotte painted it.

And it continued to grow, as is clear from a photograph of the

site taken around the turn of the century (see illustration at

left). The first building in the photograph is the tawny one in

Caillebotte's view; the low-lying ones in Caillebotte's picture

are behind the elevated metal walkway in the photograph.

Another building has been added to the complex; it sits parallel to the pathway under the arm of the crane in the later

image. At the end of that structure are the roofs of two smaller

buildings; they are the same ones that appear near the right

edge of Caillebotte's work.

What this makes plain is that Caillebotte's subject, vantage

point, and compositional strategies contain various meanings,

some of which can be confirmed by the historical record. In

this painting Caillebotte confronted the industrial presence in

Argenteuil with a bluntness Monet never did, placing the

smokestacks in a central, indeed a dominant position. The

one in the middle falls almost exactly in the center of the view.

The disposition of elements thus appears to possess an imposed

rationale (something the rich surface of the painting seems

tó 

conversely to lack). Caillebotte underscores this rationale by

extending the reflections of the chimneys almost to the bottom

of the scene, which creates a Mondrian-like grid on his canvas.

He makes the reflection of the second chimney on the left

virtually as long as the taller one to its right, and he allows the

one on the far right to be longer than the one on the far left

even though the latter chimney is actually taller.

This grid is softened by a number of factors: the interplay

of light and shadow in the water and the sky, the impasto

that Caillebotte applies liberally in both regions, the indistinct

reflections of the buildings on the river, and the buffer of

trees on either side of the factory compound. The grid is also

weakened by the asymmetries of the composition. The work

is divided into three unequal horizontal rectangles of water,

land, and sky; in fact the water takes up more area than the

land and sky combined. In addition, the right side of the

painting is more substantial than the left, owing to the location

of the factory and to the longer, thicker strokes Caillebotte

uses to describe its reflections as well as those of the clouds

above. Finally, none of the structures is strictly parallel to the

picture plane, which means none is entirely stable despite its

logic or authority.

The sense of instability, movement, and change gains its

greatest expression in the energized sky and agitated waters

that bracket this modern motif. Although Caillebotte elevates

this complex high on the picture plane, like some exalted

offering to the viewer, he reminds us at the same time of the

fickleness of all things, human and natural. Nothing could

have been more apt for France in the i88os, as anyone who

lived in or around Argenteuil knew very well.

Detail, cat. 25

108 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

26

Claude Monet

The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

60 x 99 (23 % x 39)

Private Collection, Switzerland

This is one of the classic paintings of the period, filled with

all the novelty and drama of Monet's undisguised embrace of

modern life and art. Dominating the scene with imposing

authority is the railroad bridge. Elevated above the Seine on

glistening stone piles, the sleek, undecorated structure streaks

across the landscape without interruption. It seems to stretch

the already elongated horizontal canvas to its extreme, emphasizing the bridge's immutable presence and its ability to extend

the world of the possible.

Though monumental and obviously industrial, the bridge

is neither a foreign nor an unwanted element in the scene;

indeed it appears fully appropriate. It has been baked by the

warm afternoon sun until it has turned almost white. It is

rendered humane by two men on the left who stand on the

raised bank of the river seeming to admire the structure as

a testimony to modern engineering. With its remarkable

expanse and incontestable stability, it appears to be a technological wonder, entering the picture on the left without any

support and then spanning regimented spaces large enough

for the sailboats below to pass through without hindrance.

The bridge's purposefulness is suggested not only by its

rigorous lines and tensile strength but also by the two trains

that it carries in its trestle—one heading to the left into

Argenteuil, the other to the right toward Asnières and Paris.

The smokestacks of each are visible above the chute. The one

on the right billows smoke as it builds up power, while the

other is quiet as it approaches its destination. As with the

bridge itself, Monet makes the might of the Paris-bound

train seem fitting, its smoke drifting up into the cloud-studded

sky to dissipate in the depths of the blue, as if it were an intimate part of nature.

The rest of the painting is crafted with equal subtlety. It is

carefully divided into closely coordinated shapes: the triangle

of the bank finds its echo in the more open-ended wedge of

the water. The spans of the bridge frame rectangles of sky and

the far bank. The merged form of the surging steam and the

cloud above repeat that of the cloud formation rising from the

horizon to just over the train on the left.

Most impressively, Monet has the bridge draw a new

horizon line in the picture, an indication of his belief in the

progressive power of the structure and all that it represented.

At the same time he insists that this industrial form be not

only an integral part of the landscape but also a complement

to the leisure activities that Argenteuil offered. These pastimes

are symbolized by the two sailboats below the bridge's iron bed.

As with everything else in the painting, Monet cannot help

but locate these recreational vessels in the most aesthetically

pleasing positions—one directly under the middle span of

the bridge, the other skimming its way into the light past the

male spectators on the shore.

At the same time, Monet suggests certain tensions. He

juxtaposes the modest wooden railing along the foreground

bank with the immense iron bridge above it. He makes the

trees in the background twist and turn like nature's equivalents to the bridge's geometric piles. The bridge pulls to the

right while the clouds tug to the left. Even the moment Monet

has chosen creates contrasts. The sunlight illuminates the piles

closest to us but not their mates beyond, just as it appears to

divide the surface of the Seine into an active foreground area

and a relative staid background.

Such contrasts and stresses of course were like those of

modern life, the result of the continuing pressure of industry

and change on the once familiar world of nature. In this picture Monet molds these potentially disruptive relationships

into a dynamic whole, creating harmony out of dissonance.

It is the vision of an idealist, someone who believed in the

benefits progress could bring. While noble—and widely

shared—Monet's belief was in the end naive and short-lived.

i i

2

7

Monet here combines neat geometries and enchanting light

to create a sharply defined image of great tactility and appeal.

Each part seems to have been honed with as much feeling as

precision by a master craftsman who was keenly aware of the

expressive possibilities of the materials at his disposal. Orderly,

stately, and lyrical, the painting reveals much about Monet

and his time while evoking the splendor of a summer's day.

The foreground is dominated by a bold triangular area

of high grass rendered in various shades of green and blue.

Beginning slightly to the left of center, just after a rickety

wooden fence, it rises steeply up the picture plane to end about

halfway up the right side. It is crowned by a large shrub,

whose splayed foliage, described with rich impasto, is the

culmination of the shorter but equally energized grass on the

bank. Together they create a pliant, contrasting cushion for

the railroad bridge that strikes out across the river from the

upper right corner of the canvas. The bridge and its piles form

another triangle, which establishes spatial recession with the

authority of a Renaissance perspective system. They connect

the foreground bush and bank with their counterparts on the

other side of the river while keeping them irrevocably apart.

The bridge is illuminated by a warm, late afternoon sun,

which causes the right side of the piles to glow like candles

and cast a flickering, reflective light on the underside of the

trestle, drawing attention to its striated structure. Conversely,

the left side of the columns are draped in a cool, purplish blue

shadow—essentially the same hue, though somewhat higher

in value, as that which veils the vertical sections of the trestle.

Monet extends the line of the piles to the foreground bank by

stretching their reflections across the river so that they touch

or disappear behind the ragged edge of the grass. This ploy

adroitly unites the bridge and the bank—the most prominent

elements in the painting—while underscoring their essential

differences, as the thin, irregular slats of the fence rise to meet

the huge, sleekly engineered columns above. The poetry of

these decisions is enhanced by Monet's coy suppression of any

reflections from the cross-beams between the piles so that

nothing interferes with the measured rhythm of the supports.

Three rectangular cars and a steam-spouting engine roll

across the bridge. Although we might initially assume that

they belong to the same train, the opposite is the case: knowing

that the engine would have been the same size or larger than

the cars, we realize it is farther away; in fact it is on the far

right track of the bridge, which explains why it is lower and

less visible in the trestle. That track carried trains from the

Argenteuil station (outside our view to the right) along an

eleven-kilometer route into Paris. The three cars are at the end

of a train coming from the capital into Argenteuil on the near

track. Such a seemingly small detail proves to be surprisingly

complicated and suggests Monet's close attention to the nuances

of the site. It also manifests his desire to heighten the internal

dynamics of his picture and to expand its illusionary space,

something he implies in the cropped bank, fence, and bush,

and in the way the light streams down the river from the right.

Monet is also eager to forge unity out of disparate parts.

He relates the strong rectangular shapes of the train cars to

the structure of the trestle in which they ride by silhouetting

them against the sky and using the same orange yellow for

their panels as he does for the bridge's underbelly. He has the

engine spew a stream of smoke that becomes the only cloudlike form in the sky, though he alludes to its earthbound source

by repeating its profile in the trees and bushes. The bridge ends

on the far bank exactly where the trees begin, in line with the

first slat of the wooden fence below. That line is the mbatment,

which divides the canvas into a vertical rectangle on the left

and a square on the right. Such a tactic was not new and was

easily executed. The line situates forms on the canvas so that

they appear harmonious or natural in the illusion of the scene.

That in turn gives the painting an iconic quality.

Monet goes further. While the square section contains the

largest elements, the vertical rectangle echoes the shape of the

piles and helps to emphasize their strength and monumentality.

Moreover, the trees along the distant shore break to expose

the horizon, which, if continued to the left and right, would

cut the picture perfectly in half. Extending the upper edge of

the trestle to the right leads to the upper corner of the canvas;

drawing it out to the left touches the top of the sailboat and

ends at the water's edge. Everything is intimately connected,

because Monet has distilled the jumble of the site to create a

kind of ideal world, part fact and part fiction, partly seen,

partly imagined. While solidly constructed in this deeply felt

image, Monet's personal vision was one that he would soon

find untenable.

Claude Monet

The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

54.3 X 73.3 (21 /s X 287/s)

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The John G. Johnson Collection
Catalogue I J3
28

Claude Monet

The Highway Bridge and Boat Basin

oil on canvas

60 x 79.7 (23 % x 31 /«)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Standing on the banks of the river at Petit Gennevilliers

looking north toward Argenteuil's tree-lined promenade,

Monet transforms the most popular site in his adopted town

into an image of classical calm and modern beauty. Each

element in the scene is precisely measured, meticulously

disposed, and exquisitely refined.

Compositionally the painting is a model of restraint.

The Seine stretches across the canvas, a broad span of water

carrying a dazzling array of heightened color. It is paralleled

by the thinner strip of the beige and green bank on the

opposite side, as well as a lush, fairly regular stand of trees

and the airy expanse of the cloud-filled sky. These successive

horizontal bands—each of different color, texture, and

density—provide a structure of great stability.

This balance is daringly challenged by the massive form

of the highway bridge, thrust into the picture on a radical

diagonal, offering a forceful contrast to the strata of water,

land, and sky. The bridge ends at a multistory tollhouse whose

strict but modestly scaled geometry complements the more

rugged forms of the arches, roadbed, and piers. It emerges

from a sharply defined shadow into the glare of direct sunlight, its triangular roof culminating where the line of foliage

breaks to reveal the sky.

Such subtle conjunctures abound in the picture. The triangular patch of foliage in the immediate foreground cushions

the intrusion of the bridge. An open triangle defined by the

mast, bowsprit, and stay of the black-hulled sailboat at anchor

is artfully aligned with the bridge so that most of that weighty

structure appears poetically balanced on the craft's thin cord

like some mighty arrow on an enormous bow. The mast at

the left rises from no definable source, though it presumably

belongs to a boat that lies out of our view at the very edge of

the river. Like a conductor's raised baton or one of Malevich's

suprematist elements, it hovers in space, locked into position

by our assumptions and Monet's artistry. Superimposed on

background objects, it seems to touch the right edge of the

raised white cabin of the boat behind it and to overlap the

corner of the white house on the distant shore, a device

more often associated with Cézanne in the i88os than high

impressionism of the 18705. The top of this mast changes from

orange yellow to purplish blue where it meets the sky.

One startling detail begins at the top of this mast, where

the stay descends to the left and crosses in front of the background trees, then touches the tip of the mast of the boat under

sail. The stay does not traverse the triangular white sail to

meet the boom of the boat to which it belongs; instead it ends

at the sail's upper right edge. This was a conscious decision,

which bears witness to the varied ways Monet stitched together

disparate elements to create a place of idyllic enchantment.

114 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

1874
Catalogue "5
29

Gustave Caillebotte

The Argenteuil Bridge and the Seine

c. 1883

oil on canvas

65 x 81 (25% x 3i7/

s

)

Private Collection

Prior to the arrival of the railroad in 1861, the highway bridge

was the primary link between Argenteuil and Paris, providing

the only way over the Seine. First built in 1830—1831, this

bridge quickly became the lifeline for the town. It was also one

of the area's most noted landmarks. An elegant structure of

seven arches that sprang from substantial stone foundations, it

was bold and beautiful, qualities that Caillebotte aptly emphasizes in this dramatic image.

With typical imagination and a distinctly modernist flair,

Caillebotte views the structure close up, not from a distance,

which would have forced him to play its long, straight roadbed against its rhythmic arcade. He concentrates on a single

span, pulling it so close and elevating it so high on the picture

plane that we see only one of the hand-laid, stone piers on

the far left. His low, angled vantage allows him to expose the

underside of the five steel ribs that leap across the width of

the picture and to silhouette the far rib against the cloudless

blue sky. We can likewise inspect the bottom edge of the roadbed as it overhangs the nearest arch. The tensile strength of

all these supporting elements is heightened through a subtle

manipulation of light and dark.

As an amateur engineer and boat designer, Caillebotte was

clearly interested in the mechanics of the bridge, something

he reveals in his attention to its many structural details. He

carefully delineates its various horizontal and vertical members;

he differentiates the perforated exterior ribs from the solid,

interior ones; and he shows that the feet of the arches are

bolted deeply into the midsection of the pier, as is most evident

in the one on the far right, which receives the strongest sun.

But what is perhaps most impressive about Caillebotte's

treatment of the bridge is how he suggests its elasticity and

demonstrates that each part works together to create an

integrated whole. This is clear from the multiple touches of

blue, beige, yellow, and white on the pier, which imply that it

is not a single entity but a composite of individual blocks.

From the a-ngle of its right edge, this massive form appears to

be leaning to the left, as if in response to the pressure of the

arches springing out of its side. The ribs begin in unison but

join together as they rise to the right, then disappear behind

the rib closest to us just past the midpoint of the span.

On the right Caillebotte makes the rectangular openings

in this near rib coincide with those of its mate on the far side,

an optical illusion compounded by other interesting visual

effects: the almost inexplicable square opening in the bridge

above this alignment; or the continuity of the far rib down the

pier by virtue of its shadow, which Caillebotte ends exactly

halfway across that support. This point is also where the

shadow of the bridge's roadbed on the water begins.

The shadow of the roadbed, like the bridge itself, cuts

across the canvas on a slight angle, but it becomes lighter and

more slender as it approaches the right side. That Caillebotte

does not have it meet a pier there is a mark of his ingenuity.

This quality is even more apparent in the way he lets the

arches appear to leap into a void. The only things that hold

them up are our belief in the existence of a pier beyond the

frame and our trust in Caillebotte's artfulness.

His cunning is easy to confirm, as it derives from the

dynamic Caillebotte establishes between the thrust of the

bridge and the rectangular shape of the canvas, the latter

being reiterated throughout the scene—in the pattern of darks

and lights on the water and in the distant bank and pathway.

Other carefully devised moments in the picture reveal his

painstaking decision making: the railroad bridge in the right

background appears to intersect the end of the foreground

arch; the bow of the steamboat on the river aligns with the

shadow of the railroad trestle on the bank; a factory chimney

rises in the middle of the background hill. This coordination

is baldly repeated in the way the far rib imitates the hill as

a whole. The two reach their apexes at precisely the same

point, allowing Caillebotte to suggest the link—both real and

aesthetic—between the human and the natural.

All of the parts seem to fit together perfectly. The steamboat and barge are almost equidistant from the highway bridge

and the railroad bridge and are paired with two groups of

houses in the background that themselves pleasingly frame the

collection of larger houses and factory buildings in the center.

In the wedge of sky above the bridge the upright posts of the

railing are aligned with the weightier vertical members of

the steel supports below.

The concurrence of these parts suggests Caillebotte's

belief in the essential harmonies of the world, just as their

dynamics underscore his embrace of the fundamentals of

change that ruled his day. Nothing is entirely stable here;

forms are cropped or moving through space, which itself is

both open and confined, continuous and restricted. Everything

in the picture is subject to the flickering light that Caillebotte

so sensitively renders with his broken brushwork and lively

palette, just as everything is vulnerable to the possibilities of

transformation, whether through the powers of modern art or

those of modern life.

116 
C

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3°

Claude Monet

Regatta at Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

59 x 99 (23 K x 39)

Private Collection, Switzerland

3

1

Auguste Renoir

Regatta at Argenteuil

oil on canvas

32.4 x 45.6 (12/4 x 18)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Above all else, Argenteuil was known in the Paris area as a

superb site for pleasure boating. The Seine here, on its second

loop north out of the capital as it wound its way to the English

Channel, opened to its widest reach and dropped to its greatest

depth between the eastern edge of town and a few kilometers

beyond the municipality's western border. This stretch of the

river was also one of the straightest and least encumbered.

Although bridges crossed it at various points, including two at

Argenteuil, no islands blocked its passage and no projections

of land along its banks forced it off its clearly defined course.

Argenteuil became a center for aquatic activities early

in the development of the suburbs. Parisians, seeking solace

from the city, came to enjoy themselves in the open air, savor

the excitement of the river, or indulge in various forms of

boating. Those who owned a boat could moor it there. From

the 18505 onward Argenteuil hosted regular regattas during

the summer months (see photograph on p. 120), and it was

chosen as the site for international events such as the sailing

competitions for the Universal Expositions of 1867 and 1878.

It was also selected as the home for the most prestigious sailing

club in the region—La Société des Régates Parisiennes—

whose headquarters were in the capital but whose facilities

were on Argenteuil's shores, where members were said to

leave their hearts every summer weekend.

That so many impressionist paintings completed at

Argenteuil include boats is not surprising. Recreational craft

were ever-present in warm weather, especially on the weekends and on Sundays (most people worked a six-day week).

That an impressionist painting depicts an actual regatta is also

understandable. These events occurred quite often, were lively

Cat. 30

118 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

1874
Catalogue ii9
and festive, and had considerable visual and popular appeal.

Yet the impressionists were not interested in documenting

their world like commercial illustrators. Nor did they want to

produce genre paintings for a ready market; they left that task

to mainstream artists.

What then are we to make of these two canvases?

Unfortunately, we know nothing about the genesis of either

one. No letter survives from either artist concerning the

enterprise, and no commentary from contemporaries sheds

light on the subject. Both pictures represent the same site and

were most likely painted on the same day during the summer

of 1874 when Renoir came to stay with Monet at Argenteuil.

The works share many specifics: a fleet of tall-masted sailboats

that sport red streamers from their spar tops; a white tent on

the shore flying a red-and-white striped flag; a crowd of

onlookers; the same gauzy clouds and diffuse lighting. Each

also includes an isolated boater in a different craft—a scull in

Monet's view, a rowboat in Renoir's. The compositions are

generally parallel—a rectangle of water and land set off

against a larger expanse of sky. Both have a sketchiness that

suggests a partisan style or a similarly limited time frame for

their completion. Each artist seems to have been intent on

conveying not only the movements of the boats and their

reflections on the shifting water but also the contrasting textures of the landscape: the grassy bank, the translucent river,

and the wispy clouds.

Prior to this summer Monet had completed just one other

canvas of an event such as this. In 1874 he finished not only

this painting but another of the same kind of gathering. These

constitute the only three versions of this subject out of the nearly

seventy views of the river that Monet painted during his six

years at Argenteuil. Renoir's painting is unique in his oeuvre.

Whatever prompted the two friends to paint these pictures,

both embraced one of the most contemporary forms of entertainment. And both created final products that are as different

as they are alike. To begin with, Monet's canvas is twice as big

as Renoir's. Monet also spreads his boats across the river, while

Renoir allows his to form a jostling crowd in the center. The

cluster of sails and hulls in Renoir's view gives the impression

of greater activity, while the carefully positioned boats in

Monet's painting slow the pace.

The differences are evident in style as well as composition.

In Monet's picture the short, independent brush strokes that

indicate the foliage on the bank lengthen and become more

horizontal as Monet describes the Seine and then the sky.

In Renoir's handling of paint there is very little relationship

between the bank and the river, or between the water and

the sky. Similarly, Monet defines the edges of most of these

sails with an individual line, often of a different color, whereas

Renoir gives the sails plasticity through the paint itself or

through the juxtaposition of bare and painted canvas, such as

that between the background trees and the second sail from

the left. Renoir makes the spectators on his shore more substantial than Monet's veritable stick figures and opts for a

more spontaneous effect overall. Monet insists on freedom but

also on more stringent coordination of elements, a tendency

in much of his work at Argenteuil, revealing his more formal

sense of order.

Unlike Renoir, Monet had settled down in this suburban

town to raise a family and live what amounted to a bourgeois

life. He was constantly faced with the necessity to negotiate

between propriety and disregard, conformity and independence.

All of the impressionists were, of course; but some, like Renoir,

may not have taken the challenge quite as much to heart.

Boating activities on the Seine at Argenteuil, late nineteenth century
Cat. 31
3

2

Claude Monet

Sailboats at Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

60 x 8 1 (23/8 x 3i7/»)

Private Collection, Switzerland

33

Auguste Renoir

Sailboats at Argenteuil

oil on canvas

51x6 5 (20 !/8 x 25

 5/s)

Portland Art Museum, Oregon,

Bequest of Winslow B. Ayer

If any two paintings define the shared aims and aesthetic of

the impressionists at Argenteuil in the 18705, it is surely this

pair. Done in the summer of 1874, probably on the same days,

perhaps at the same time, certainly from the same spot, they

have rightfully come down to us as icons of the movement.

They also stand as heartfelt testimonies to the ways in which

two friends could work together without jealousy or rancor

to create innovative art.

There is little precedent for this kind of activity. Artists in

the past copied other art, and they often worked side by side,

either in the studio or on field trips, learning from each other

and from mentors who accompanied them or from masters

and images they carried in their heads. But it is extremely

rare that two premier artists would set up their easels in

front of the same motif, as Monet and Renoir did here, and

produce completely finished paintings so close in kind that

they intended to sell. It suggests a noble dose of humility, since

neither work would be seen as unique. It also suggests profound mutual respect, since each artist knew the other's talents

and could anticipate—indeed even witness—the way the

other's painting would turn out. It underscores their devotion

to rendering modern subjects en plein air and to reveling in

the glories of the moment.

The moment they both capture is manifestly glorious,

with warm light filling the scene. The sails of the foreground

boat billow with air and anticipation, setting the tone for the

craft beyond, which race up and down the river, energized by

the wind. Even the ducks paddle contentedly in the immediate

foreground, while the river glistens. Both artists indicate

their vantage points on the bank by including tufts of grass in

the lower right corner. Each allows the main components in

the picture—water, land, and sky—to stretch out across the

canvas. This is a day to celebrate life and to enjoy the offerings

of a place like Argenteuil.

For all of their similarities of site, subject, and feeling,

the two landscapes are actually marked by many differences.

Renoir depicts more sailboats than does Monet, including one

at anchor, while Monet opts for two sculls that Renoir omits.

The white house in Renoir's background trees is not to be

found in Monet's. The dock enters Renoir's view from behind

a cushion of grass; in Monet's it begins higher on the picture

plane and emerges without encumbrances. A man stands at
the end of the dock in Renoir's painting, silhouetted against

the jib, his hands in his pockets; his counterpart in Monet's

canvas is on the deck of the boat and seems about to climb

into the cockpit, where a second figure sits holding the tiller.

In Renoir's picture the skipper stands, allowing the jib to luff

and the ropes to lie on the deck by the mast. Even the ducks

are different. There are four in each. But in Monet's version

they are all white and divided into pairs; whereas in Renoir's

two are white and two are brown, while three are grouped

together in no apparent order and the fourth swims alone

toward the dock.

The differences do not end there. The reflections in

Monet's view are more consistent and intact; in Renoir's they

are more fractured and dissolved, as evident particularly in

the reflections of the sails of the foreground boat. Monet makes

the contours of the background trees more regular than does

Renoir, with fewer sharp drops and rises. Renoir includes

two boats at the far left that do not appear in Monet's picture

and also more of the bank. In addition, he shows more of

the bridge at the far right than does Monet, even providing a

glimpse of what lies beyond the first span.

Comparison of the two works is therefore a lesson in

artistic decision making, an opportunity to evaluate contrasting

ideas about compositional tactics, editing, and surface structure,

all of which reveal different ways of thinking about art and

ultimately about the world. Compositionally, Renoir's version

is messier, more jumbled, more active and congested. His

touch is also more varied and erratic. Monet's composition is

cleaner, simpler, neater, and more disciplined, just like his

manipulation of the medium. The internal harmonies have

been more distilled in his painting: two red sculls run parallel

to the bank in the background, for example; and the more

erect mast of the foreground boat makes the whole image

tauter and more poised. Renoir's left-leaning mast makes the

jib and mainsail less muscular.

Emblematic of this contrast is the way each artist handles

the bowsprit of the foreground boat. Renoir's not only intersects the dock, it runs parallel to the bottom of the picture,

its stay overlapping the stern of the anchored boat to the

right. In Monet's view the same bowsprit angles up from the

dock, allowing it to be silhouetted against the water so that it

appears more forceful, active, and engaged, much like the sails

of the boat itself. The mainsail in Monet's picture tends to

dominate the scene, whereas in Renoir's it has to compete

with other white forms for our attention. Monet's sails become

purer, more abstract, and more insistent, evident from the fact

that he allows the mainsail to prick the top of the painting.

Renoir's sails seem part of the general chaos of life, as they are

less rigorous and cut off by the top of the canvas.

Monet coerces the larger whole into an orderly set of

relationships; Renoir allows relationships to remain organic,

as if they were generated from within, not imposed from

without. Monet's image offers a particular kind of idealism,

one that is considered and rational, balanced and reassuring.

Renoir's world is closer to real life, with all of its entanglements

and loose ends. Neither is better or worse. These paintings are

simply different, which in the end is perhaps more significant

than the initial impression of their many similarities.
Cat. 32
Cat. 33

Catalogue I25
34

Edouard Manet

Argenteuil i874

oil on canvas

59.4 X 81.3 (233/8X 32)

National Museum and Gallery Cardiff

From the banks of the Seine at Petit Gennevilliers, Manet

looks across the water to Argenteuil's laundry houses and

promenade. Unlike most paintings by the impressionists, this

canvas is activated more by forms and fluid paint handling

than by light and weather conditions. This is due in part to

the unfinished nature of the image; like his view of Claude

and Camille Monet in the studio boat (cat. 39), it was the

product of only a few working sessions. Thus even in the nineteenth century it would have been considered a sketch, not a

completed work of art. If Manet had pursued the painting

further, he would surely have developed the natural effects he

hints at here.

But what is particularly compelling about the scene is its

apparent spontaneity and undeniable directness. Little seems

to have come between Manet's eye and hand, which translated

the visual data onto the canvas with consummate freedom.

The immediacy and purity of that transcription were most

likely the result of his executing the picture en plein air, not in

the studio, as had generally been his practice. Ironically, it may

well have been the difficulty of carting the canvas, easel, and

painting supplies to the site and enduring the fluctuations of

nature and perhaps the interest of onlookers that contributed

to Manet's decision to leave the work in its present state.

In any case, the impression of its plein-air execution derives

from its bravura application of paint. Long strokes of golden

brown and teal in the immediate foreground palpably describe

the ripples of water, the reflections of the boats, and the whispering light of the mirrored sky. The boats themselves are more

sculptural, particularly the hulls, where blended touches of gray

suggest their plasticity. These strokes seem to have been set

down with stunning swiftness, which is even more noticeable

in other aspects of the craft—the deck, boom, sails, and masts—

all of which have a freshness that suggests their nearly instantaneous realization.

Beyond the boats Manet changes brushes, colors, and

effects, covering the area between the pleasure craft and the

bank with broad, multilayered swaths of olive green and black

that completely hide the canvas left visible elsewhere. Yet here

too there is a straightforwardness to his handling that implies

he painted the passage while standing on the bank. The

laundry houses support this notion, as they consist of single

brush strokes, laid down without hesitation. While expressing

utmost confidence, these marks are also lightly outlined in

black, as if Manet were consciously pairing line and color, edge

and form, a raw juxtaposition he would have refined if he had

continued to work on the image. The trees above are dashed

off with great facility, while the sky is made up of energetic

strokes that head in different directions, underscoring the ease

of Manet's actions and the openness of his aesthetic to novel

motions of the brush.

This picture is compositionally very close to Manet's

fully developed Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 35). Three boats sit in

roughly the same position in each, their gaffs, furled sails,

and reflections all but identical. So similar is the disposition

of elements in the two paintings that we might presume this

version served as a preliminary study for the other or as a first

essay Manet decided to broaden to create the finished work.

It is highly unlikely that the artist would have painted the

sketch after the more developed image, which lends credence

to the assumption that this version was at least begun on site.

The evidence is of course purely circumstantial. Given

Manet's virtuosity, he could easily have painted this canvas in

his studio. Certain details do suggest the kind of care that

such an environment inspires. Note the way the bows of the

boats nudge each other, the first rising above the gunwale

of the second, the second precisely in line with the edge of

the third. In the finished painting Manet pulls the first bow

down slightly so that it just misses the gunwale of the second

boat, as the second does the third. In the sketch the masts are

almost too perfectly aligned and too judiciously spaced. In the

final version Manet disrupts both solutions, tilting the masts

more irregularly and making the space between them more

evenly divided, which renders them less consciously artful.

Furthermore, in the sketch Manet is deliberate about coordinating the masts with the laundry houses in the background.

From left to right, the first one parallels the right edge of

the first building, the second bisects the second structure, and

the third imitates the first by falling at the right edge of the

second washhouse. In the finished picture he adjusts the points

of contact to accommodate the shift in spacing; in so doing,

as with the angles of the masts, he makes their relationships

appear less planned.

Whether the product of the site or the studio, the sketch

reveals how well Manet balances the spontaneous with the

considered and how much he relies on stringent formal

structures, despite the apparent casualness of the surface. He

divides the picture into successive bands of light and dark—

the lighter foreground water and darker hulls, the lighter

sails and darker reflections in the water, the lighter stretch of

the bank and laundry houses and the darker band of trees,

126 
C

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12
and finally the lighter sky. In an equally discriminating way,

he controls the heights of the masts so that they descend on

a consistent diagonal. In the final version he opted for less

obvious rhythms.

Perhaps Manet employed these strategies to keep his errant

brush in line or to help him order the inchoate—the unmanned

boats and moving waters, the indeterminacy of modern life

and the fickleness of nature. Whatever the case, the sketch holds

as many surprises as it does recognizable relationships. He

includes a trail of smoke, for example, that twists upward

toward the left-hand corner from an unseen source. In the

finished painting he depicts several factory chimneys, though

all of them are silent.

The challenges of the picture and its evident working state

may explain why it was never exhibited during Manet's lifetime and why it remained in his hands until his posthumous

studio sale in 1884. It then passed from dealer to dealer until

it entered the great Welsh collection of Margaret Davies, the

only private owner of the picture, who generously donated it

to the National Museum and Gallery Cardiff in 1963.

Detail, cat. 34

128 THI-: IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

35

Edouard Manet

The Seine at Argenteuil

1874

oil on canvas

62.3 x 103 (24/2 x 40/2)

Private Collection, on extended loan to the

Courtauld Gallery, London

In Manet's hands the familiar is often layered with the

mysterious or inexplicable, the comprehensible transformed

into the confusing or strange. Occasionally, the reassuring

can suddenly seem inauspicious.

Such elisions or crossovers occur even in paintings as

radiant as this. They are more subtle here than in much of

Manet's work, particularly that from the i86os when he burst

onto the Paris art scene, laying siege to long-held beliefs about

French art. That may be because in this large and ambitious

picture he has engaged a subject that had not been part of his

repertoire during the previous decade. It was not until after

the disasters of the Franco-Prussian War and Commune of

1870-1871 that he began to develop an interest in the innovations of his younger impressionist colleagues—so evident in

this canvas—namely, the rendering of contemporary figures

en plein air in recognizable settings with broad brushwork

and heightened color.

During the summer of 1874 Manet spent several months

at his family's property in Gennevilliers across the river from

Argenteuil. He immersed himself in the study of these impressionist strategies, producing some of the finest paintings of

his career, this work among them. Ostensibly, this view of the

boat rental area at Argenteuil presents a motif that would

have appealed to most urban dwellers in the 18705, the primary

clientele for such art. The countryside appears bright and

inviting. Two well-dressed figures—an elegant woman and

a spruce young child—stand on the banks of the river whose

surface shimmers with light and color. Boats bob at anchor

on either side of them, while a soft but insistent wind blows

through the scene, causing the water to form ripples and

the grass in the foreground to become activated. Manet's

scandalous Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia of the Salons

of 1863 and 1865, respectively, are very distant from this image.

There is no apparent dependence here on studio refinements

and no expressed desire to make a name for himself by appropriating past art in an overt and shocking manner.

All is not as simple as it may appear in this painting,

however. While initially dazzling, the landscape suggests

inherent ambiguities typical of Manet, who by 1874 was

widely acknowledged as one of France's leading artists, even

if he did not enjoy broad-based support. First, there is the

question of the two figures. They are most easily understood

as a mother and her child. But Manet provides no support

for this reading. The two do not interact with each other or

with their environment. It is not even clear if they are holding

hands. The most one can say is that they seem to be out for a

stroll and have stopped to look at this stretch of the Seine.

Yet it is not the most picturesque site. Although the boats

are attractive, the structures at the opposite bank are not.

They are houses that did laundry for residents of Argenteuil.

They immediately lock the scene into modern culture (formerly

people washed their clothes in the river) and affirm the area's

proximity to an urban community. Without these floating

buildings, the view might seem more rural. Their hard, planar

shapes compromise the idyllic quality of the setting, contrasting

with the trees and with the graceful, sculpted hulls of the

boats in the foreground whose colors they unexpectedly share.

This site obviously serves labor as well as leisure and has been

irrevocably altered by the presence of human beings.

The band of trees beyond the washhouses confirms this

realization. In views of more remote locales by mainstream

contemporary artists, trees are more randomly arranged.

These were planted by municipal agreement. They are the

same species, regularly spaced, and of similar shape and height.

Manet underscores the suggestion of human intervention by

having the masts of the boats vaguely imitate the line of trees,

from which they of course derive. He also implies it with

the two figures on the bank, whose closeness to each other

mimics that of the trees and whose hats even echo individual

tree shapes.

It would not be unreasonable to expect more activity near

an urban environment, but only these two figures occupy the

site, making the scene seem almost ominously empty. Why

are the child and the woman there? Are they waiting for

others to join them for some pleasant activity? Or are they

in a reflective stasis, caught—like the other objects in the picture—between one moment and the next, between stability

and change, illusion and reality? Manet allows us to contemplate these slightly troubling questions so fundamental to

his time, just as he invites us to enjoy the beauties of the day

and the brilliance of its translation into paint.

130 
Catalogue J

3i
Gustave Caillebotte

Richard Gallo and His Dog Dic\ at Petit Gennevilliers

1884

oil on canvas

89 x 116 (35 x 455/«)

Private Collection

Carefully considered yet strikingly fresh, alive with light but

marvelously restrained, this painting is as imaginative as it

is direct. It is also as much a portrait of a place and a time as

it is of Caillebotte's good friend Richard Gallo. Mixing genres

as well as traditions, the timeless with the transient, it attests

to this artist's ingenuity and the ways that the suburban town

of Argenteuil could continue to yield novel material for the

advancement of modern painting.

With his typical rigor, Caillebotte divides the scene into

four strata—the foreground bank, the Seine beyond, the houses

and trees on the other side of the river, and the cloudless sky.

Stretching the width of the canvas, these bands suggest the

continuation of the space beyond the confines of the frame.

Except for the sky, which is thinly painted with a relatively

pale blue, each area is emboldened by rich pigment and almost

tangible light. Little wonder Richard Gallo is out for a walk

with his dog on this fine dayi

Because Caillebotte lived on the Petit Gennevilliers side of

the river, it seems appropriate that he painted this picture on

his home turf. Given the strength of the late morning or early

afternoon sun, it also makes sense that Gallo posed in the shade,

where it would have been cooler. The shade was provided

by a grove of trees that photographs and other paintings show

standing on this bank of the river. While protected from the

sun, which bakes the promenade across the Seine, the foreground nonetheless bears telling evidence of its powers. The

untended grass on either side of the well-trod path sparkles

with light. So too does the path, dotted with pom-poms of light

intense enough to obliterate the forms beneath them. Even

Gallo and his dog are adorned with these sun spots, although

they are softer and less distinct. One wonders what Seurat

would have thought of these amorphous but believable points

of light.

It was from such highly intelligent impressionist paintings

of course that Seurat learned his lessons. Gallo and his dog

are clearly outlined and statuesque, much as Seurat's figures

would be; the two also seem curiously frozen, despite their

implied movement through the scene. They are not connected

to one another by a leash; indeed both are in their own worlds,

walking without regard for the other. At the same time, they

are subtly linked. Both walk only on the grassy part of the path;

each leads with the right foot, the left pushing off or raised;

both hold themselves erect and assume serious, elegant airs,

the dog more so than his owner. The dog is further distinguished by his position in front of a dais-like area of the

bank, which begins just below his nose and continues past his

bejeweled neck to end behind him. His tail punctures the

outline of the slope on the right, its fuzzy extension standing

up like the tufts of grass.

Gallo's position is similarly calculated. Most of his body

overlaps the river, unlike his dog's, which is largely landlocked. The water conveys a sense of being open and free,

reflective and changeable. The ground, by contrast, imposes

restraints and limits. Only the dog's head and tail push

beyond the bank's hold, but the figure of the master rises

through all three zones—the path, river, and opposite shore—

appropriate for this man of the world, who was the editor of

Le Constitutionnel, a major Paris newspaper. Note the way

Caillebotte aligns Gallo's head with forms in the background.

The far bank draws his gaze horizontally across the canvas

and out of the scene to the left; the wall lines up with his

nose in front and his hairline in back, a conjuncture that is

reinforced in the melding of his bowler hat with the foliage

on the trees across the river.

Richard Gallo, unlike his dog, is fundamentally related

to the complex constructs of Argenteuil, a distinctly modern

place. It is where trees give way to large, sun-bleached houses,

and then to an array of smaller structures on the left. Initially

there appears to be no rationale to this progression. But it is

ruled by late nineteenth-century logic, which sees the realm

of nature giving way to suburbia, and suburbia is altered by

commercial pressures, which leads to the elimination of all

natural elements. The human takes over the landscape, creating an all-too-familiar innocuous sprawl.

The reflections on the water reinforce this progression.

First the foliage stretches across the river to enclose Gallo's

figure, then it quickly diminishes to allow the two large houses

to assume their place of prominence; they are followed by the

more modest, blue-roofed house to the left. At this point the

reflections level out and become more amorphous as the buildings diminish toward the left edge.

It was men like Richard Gallo whose intellect and power

effected this transformation and created the diverse, contradictory situation laid out in this picture. There are no judgments

rendered here; like a good journalist or newspaper editor,

Caillebotte makes certain that the strata are level. He captures

36
Catalogue '33
a similar balance between the painting's posture as a portrait of

Gallo and its allegiance to the venerable, though modernized

tradition of landscape art. Given the amount of canvas he

devotes to the reflections in the river, however, not to mention

the seemingly random dashes of light in the foreground, the

artist communicates the lurking sense that many things are

unknown and unforeseen in the world, despite his almost

scientific naturalism or the brimming confidence of Gallo

and his rococo pet. Gallo steps forward like a modern Apuros,

but he enters a universe dominated by shifting relationships

and unpredictable realities. He is isolated and alone here, as

is fitting in a painting created to honor him. But that would

not have been the case in the broader arena of combative Paris

and its evolving suburbs in the i88os.

Detail, cat. 36

M Tin- IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL 4

37

Claude Monet

The Ball-Shaped Trees, Argenteuil

1876

oil on canvas

60 x 81 (23

5

/8X 3i7/«)

Private Collection, Europe

Standing on the Petit Gennevilliers side of the Seine, looking

northwest to the end of Argenteuil's tree-lined promenade,

Monet endows this painting with a noble stillness and an emotive grandeur more reminiscent of Claude Lorrain and earlier

art than the breezy spontaneity of high impressionism. To

some extent, this seriousness derives from the partitioning of

the composition—a grassy bank in the immediate foreground,

a stretch of undisturbed water, a strip of land in the background with its assorted houses and trees, and a broad swath

of sky capped by a soft gray cloud that reaches the width of

the canvas. But the gravitas also springs from the intricate

relationships Monet establishes among these areas. The bush

on the left is echoed first in the ball-shaped trees, then in the

denser arc of the chestnut grove to the right. The reflections of

the central trees reach across the Seine to unite the two banks,

a coupling that is encouraged by the dip in the foreground

undergrowth. The reeds on the right, by overlapping the

reflection of the trees along the promenade, provide another

link between near and far.

The classical calm of the view is further engendered by

Monet's close coordination of color and touch. The greens,

purples, and browns of the foreground reappear in deeper

values in the background, while the pale blues, pinks, and

beiges of the sky are carried across the central section by the

tranquil waters of the Seine. Similarly, Monet's staccato-like

brushwork in the foliage of the near shore finds its counterpoint in the more matted application of paint in the distance.

Conversely, the long, horizontal strokes in the sky are given

even greater prominence in their reflections on the river. Other

small alliances reveal Monet's sensitivity to the site and his

desire to evoke a harmonious parity among its elements.

The scene represented is exceedingly peaceful. No boats

ply the waters, no factory chimneys spew smoke, no promenaders disturb Monet's contemplative isolation. So quiet is the

image that the river could easily be mistaken for a small pond

or lake, while the two houses might be misinterpreted as being

part of a private estate. Nothing could be further from the

case, as the area was one of the most popular in Argenteuil

and the subject of many paintings, including Boudin's early

view of about 1866 (cat. i) and Caillebotte's portrait oí Richard

Gallo and His Dog Dicl^ of 1884 (cat. 36). The same houses

appear in Caillebotte's stately rendering of his friend, while the

tallest trees in Boudin's landscape are the same that stand in

the middle of Monet's. By eliminating people and pleasurable

pastimes, however, Monet transforms this public site into a

place for personal reflection, which ultimately explains why

the painting possesses such an aura of distilled serenity.

The impressionists had often turned the private into the

public. Degas peered into backstage areas at the ballet and

intimate interiors of brothels for his art, while Monet used his

backyard at Argenteuil as the setting for numerous paintings.

But in this gentle, evenly lit scene Monet achieves the opposite,

as he does in his portrait of his studio boat from a vantage point

slightly further to the right (cat. 38). He suggests the ways in

which the external world can give rise to poetic reveries and

the contradictions of modern Argenteuil can be suppressed for

the evocation of a bygone order.

It is not that Monet renounces his period or compromises

his commitment to a contemporary vocabulary. No Barbizon

artist or follower of Claude Lorrain would have applied his

medium with the freedom Monet demonstrates throughout

this work, particularly in the bush on the left, whose branches

are forcefully set down with single strokes of a loaded brush,

causing each leaf to quiver with life. Nor would they have been

as attuned to the specific conditions of light and atmosphere,

temperature and movement, that Monet so deftly conveys here.

Yet Monet has clearly framed his view in a rigorous

enough way to carve a classical idyll out of a more diverse

setting. The melange of structures that stood to the left of

the imposing houses, which Caillebotte included without apology, were part of the sprawling development of Argenteuil's

western corridor. Monet does not avoid them entirely in this

painting; they are partly visible through the branches of the

bush on the left. But he has minimized them. After four years

of living among Argenteuil's bold transformations of tradition,

which he had propagated in dozens of iconic images, the now

thirty-five-year-old artist had begun to revise his opinion of

this progressive-minded suburb. There was something splendid

about silence and quiet sunsets, just as there was much to be

gained by retreating to one's own garden, an option Monet

increasingly exercised from 1876 onward. This painting exudes

Claudian qualities because they were becoming essential to

Monet. It should be no surprise that the foreground foliage

seems so strained; nature was at risk in Argenteuil's evolving

future, which makes the subtle connections that Monet effects

between foreground and background all the more elegiac.

36 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGEKTEUIL
Catalogue L

37
Claude Monet

The Studio Boat ,874

oil on canvas

50 x 64 (i95/« x 25/4)

Kroller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

This subdued but resonant painting of a tranquil stretch of

the Seine is an imaginative though verifiable combination of

elements dear to Monet. It depicts one of his favorite sites,

the boat basin just downriver from the highway bridge, which

is out of view to the right. And it includes the promenade at

Argenteuil, which appears in the background, bordered by a

line of richly foliated trees and the houses on the left. Most

important perhaps, it features his studio boat.

Lying at anchor next to two tether poles presumably sunk

into the river bottom by the Petit Gennevilliers bank of the

Seine, the boat turns on an acute angle. Its light green wooden

cabin is tucked neatly inside the gunwales of the shapely

black hull, its sleek roof lifting up at the back as a broader

counterpart to the elongated bow. Although the boat appears

relatively substantial here, it was a modest craft that Monet

had commissioned in 1874, the year he painted this picture.

After living in Argenteuil for two and a half years and completing many views of the Seine from its banks, he wanted to

be able to work directly on the river. This desire was natural

for someone creating images of great immediacy. Painting

from his boat, he could provide his viewers with the sensation

of being virtually at water level, buoyant and unfettered, alone

and yet at one with the world. He probably also wanted to

be able to take the boat out for pleasure rides on the Seine,

imitating so many of his contemporaries.

Growing up in Saint-Adresse, a bourgeois suburb of the

industrial port city of Le Havre, Monet was familiar with

nautical craft and had painted them in all shapes and sizes

throughout his youth. One of his earliest works is a pencil

drawing of frigates and dories he saw regularly along the

coast of the English Channel. There is no record of Monet's

having done much traveling by boat, except when fleeing to

England and Holland during the Franco-Prussian War and

the Commune. Nor is there evidence that he ever owned a

boat before moving to Argenteuil. His father earned his

living servicing larger ships as a chandler, so perhaps until

this time boats were too closely associated with labor to instill

notions of leisure.

That Monet at age thirty-three purchased a boat and

rendered it so faithfully is significant on a personal and a practical level. It speaks of his success, as such a boat would have

been expensive. Monet earned 24,800 francs the previous year,

or twice what doctors and lawyers were making in Paris at

the time, and he was ordering his wines from Narbonne and

Bordeaux instead of drinking cheaper local vintages. At the

same time, he must have believed that the boat was a reasonable

investment. Although he was generally careful about money,

he never skimped on professional expenses. He bought his

painting supplies from one of the best houses in Paris, for

instance, and maintained a studio in the capital so that he could

meet dealers and collectors; he was keen to ensure that his

canvases would remain in superb physical condition over time

(as most of his work from the Argenteuil period has). Monet

also had unwavering confidence in himself as an artist and

would do what it took to advance his career.

Yet this painting does not express boldness. The boat sits

alone on the river, utterly unadorned, as if abandoned or overlooked. In other views, notably by Manet (see essay fig. 20), it

features a sporty striped awning above the door and a flagpole

that stands erect near the bow. Here it appears somewhat

forlorn, much like the scene as a whole, with its somber tones,

dull gray light, and absence of human beings. The site hardly

seems the same one that inspired so many vibrant paintings

of modern life during the decade.

The peace in this picture is weightier and more prescient;

we are being asked to enter a contemplative world, symbolized

by the boat with its solemn reflections and sense of isolation.

Although we are in one of the most popular areas of town, we

are looking at a studio, a place where the artist ponders

the nature of things and tries to give form to feeling. The

invitation is complicated in Monet's case, because he always

claimed that he never had a studio but painted only in the

outdoors. In addition, his floating atelier was modeled on a

boat that his older friend, Barbizon artist Charles Daubigny,

had built in the 18505 and employed to paint in remote corners

of nature that had not felt the pulse of change.

The quiet in Monet's painting seems hard-won if not

slightly forced. The boat appears attached to the background

by the poles and the reflections of the trees, at the same time

it is pulled toward the foreground by its orientation to the

right. Monet himself was likewise caught between conflicting

concerns—between desires for undisturbed nature and for

the exhilaration of modernity, between the romantic past and

the realities of the present. As a modern landscape painter,

he sought to resolve these conflicts in various ways, providing

tethers and guideposts like the poles in the river. But he

may have also felt obliged to expose the difficulties of the

task: inside the cabin sits a vaguely defined figure, perhaps

Monet himself, alone in the shadows as if contemplating the

mysteries of art making and the ways in which the old and

new, the imagined and visible, inform our understanding of

ourselves and our time.

38 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

3«
Catalogue J

39
39

Edouard Manet

Claude and Camille Monet in His Studio Boat

1874

oil on canvas

106 x 134 (41^ x 52/4)

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

He sits snug and secure in his floating studio, his beautiful

wife at his side, the boat's ornamental awning extended over

their heads. Bedecked in his straw hat, his brush in his right

hand, his palette and other instruments of his craft in his left,

the quintessential impressionist is represented by his urbane

friend Manet as hard at work. With his canvas angled into the

picture beside his knees, his body is oriented toward his art.

But he seems to have been distracted by our presence and

turns his head and shoulders in our direction. Despite this

slight contrapposto, his position is stabilized by the planar

surfaces behind him. Those to his left and right are the exterior

walls of the studio cabin; the one directly behind him is the

studio's interior. The edges of these walls frame his head, keep

his torso erect, and lock his arms into their actions.

His wife sits in profile, her arms by her side, her chest

boldly outlined against the right panel of the cabin. From this

closed, formal position, made more so by her full dress and

high-collared jacket, she turns her head to face us, her eyes

unblinking, her reserved expression matching her overall

stance. She is held in place by the outside edge of the cabin as

it descends behind her elegant, oversized bonnet to her chin

and by the curve of the awning that hangs down just above

her head. She is also pinned by the railing on the gunwale at

the lower right, which projects from the juncture of her jacket

and her bustle, and by the lax halyard that begins at her backside and rises to touch the edge of her jacket before exiting

the scene at the right on the same horizontal axis as her

pinched waist. Finally, her back is firmly silhouetted against

the irregular but evidently open area behind her.

Claude and Camille Monet are literally and figuratively

bound together in this picture, like muse and performer, or

more mundanely, like some bourgeois couple whose privacy

has been invaded by an outsider. Manet emphasizes their

connectedness, not only through their proximity—their legs

overlap, and Monet's left elbow touches Camille's right hand—

but also through the radical limitations he has imposed on the

composition. There is nowhere else to go here, so constrained

is the space and so limited are the number of elements.

Of course the latter is due in part to the painting's incomplete state. In the nineteenth century as well the work would

have been seen as merely a sketch and would have required

considerable refinement to qualify as a finished work of art. It

would have held little value and less meaning for the contemporary French audience, a well-heeled and narrow-minded

group. Even those who thought highly of pure bravura would

have expected more definition. Monet's face, for example, is

blurred, and the rest of the canvas very thinly painted.

It was the pervasive prejudice against the spontaneous and

the unfinished that Manet and his impressionist colleagues

challenged, especially during the iSyos. They believed that the

direct expression of sensations that were derived from personal

contact with carefully chosen subjects could provide their

audience with a more vital and honest art. By clinging to the

present and to that which was verifiable, the impressionists

could affirm the heroism of their own period (which Charles

Baudelaire had declared to be imperative for artists as early

as the 18405). They could assert the value of the artist as a

living and sensitive individual responding to the things of

this world. They could also elevate the fundamentals of their

craft, drawing attention to their expressive characteristics, not

suppressing them through the ploys of illusionism to some

ideal realm drawn from the mind of the artist and his awareness of art history.

Their efforts were not greeted with immediate success;

traditions were deeply ingrained. But they were not universally

derided, as is often made out. The first impressionist exhibition,

held in 1874, the same year Manet painted this work, attracted

as many positive reviews as stinging criticisms. Even writers

who did not like the show applauded the artists' initiative

and daring.

Manet did not participate in this inaugural exhibition, preferring to test his mettle against the mainstream competition

in the annual state-sponsored Salon. While he too bore the

brunt of strong remarks, he was widely recognized as a talent

of enormous promise. He would never have submitted this

painting to public review, however; in his eyes too it would

have been only an initial essay. It is not known why he abandoned the sketch. But it is certain that he was committed to

modern subjects—in this case, a friend and his wife—and to

what even in its infancy was a forceful image, given its cropping, immediacy, and forthrightness. This was an orientation

that Monet greatly appreciated. The painting was also one that

he greatly admired, which is perhaps why Manet gave it to

him and why Monet kept it until his death in 1926.

140 
Catalogue I 

I
4°

Edouard Manet

Boating

oil on canvas

97.2 x 130.2 (38/4 x 51/4)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer

Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

There is something strange and disconcerting about this

remarkably simplified painting, a feeling that undercuts its

leisure subject, fresh light, and appealing color. The unease

derives in part from the couple that dominates the scene as

well as from their cryptic attitudes, but it also stems from

the bluntness of the composition and from Manet's aggressive

handling of his medium.

Initially it is the man in the center who attracts our notice.

Seeming at once disinterested and disdainful, he trains his eyes

on us as if we were the object of contemplation, not the other

way around. His stare is intensified by his bushy eyebrows, one

of which arches higher than the other, contributing to his

perplexing expression. His power is also increased by the heed

Manet gives to his facial features, with strong refracted light

sculpting his nose and emphasizing the prominent ridge above

his eye sockets.

Seated at the helm of the radically cropped boat, this man

appears completely in charge. Although no longer young

and not particularly athletic, he seems fit, with the Belvedere

bend of his upper body, a taut neck, and sizable arms all

adding to the impression of strength. In contrast to his face,

his arms are crudely rendered. His right arm emerges forcefully from the tight, crisply defined sleeve of his white cotton

shirt, extending the length of his left thigh and closing in a fist

just above his knee. His left arm rests firmly on the tiller, his

hand cupping its end.

His arms create a U-shaped form that is echoed in the

stern of the boat and made sharper in the angle of his legs, the

truncated sail, and the section of water defined by the halyard.

The diagonal of the halyard parallels the man's back and is

vaguely repeated in the black ribbon of the woman's bonnet—

small harmonies that reinforce those of the larger whole.

The parasol on the right lies parallel to the gunwale and the

man's left leg; the oarlock at the lower left is the reverse of

the looped end of the material hanging from the woman's hat

directly above it.

In many ways the woman is the opposite of her companion.

He confronts our gaze; she looks in another direction. He bends

forward, twisting to his left; she leans back in a more rigid

pose. He is engaged in maneuvering the craft but is not paying

attention to his task; she is simply relaxing but focuses on

something outside the scene, an intentness that is emphasized

by her clear profile, the distinct vertical line of her neck,

and the juxtaposition of her nose and the stern. Her dress is

colorful, striped, and carefully painted; his sporty sailor's outfit

is more broadly rendered in shades of white and gray. Her

hat is a floppy, bell-like shape; his is a crisp, straw boater with

neat geometries.

At the same time, the two figures are subtly linked. Her

hat appropriates the colors of his clothing, just as his assumes

those of the stripes and belt of her dress. In addition, the shape

of her hat is retraced in the outline of his right shoulder as it

continues in the fold at the back of his shirt and the edge of his

sleeve. His legs set up the most obvious connections: while his

left leg stretches out and disappears under the flutter of the

woman's dress, the right one bends up sharply from behind

her upper body, almost appearing to grow out of her chest and

abdomen, which are accentuated by her high-riding gold belt.

There is something vaguely sexual about these conjunctures and contrasts, a suggestion Manet heightens by posing

the woman in such a vulnerable, "unladylike" position. The

tight cropping of the composition, moreover, concentrates

attention on the few elements in the scene and makes us feel

as if we have intruded on this couple, prompting the man's

visual interrogation. Other details further these notions: such

as dark lines inside the man's left pant leg, which appear to

imitate the stripes on her dress; the rise of the boom, which

is restrained by the tightly tied halyard; and the highly suggestive way this halyard is knotted around a peg protruding from

the wooden seat.

In a distinctly modernist sense, less is more here. Manet is

silent about the ambiguous relationship between these figures

or our relationship to them. Wrapped in anonymity yet

extraordinarily immediate, the couple and the moment in which

they are framed are loaded with meanings. These implications

cannot be fully set out, a conclusion the artist underscores with

his broad application of paint in so many areas, especially the

background waters of the Seine. The painting is therefore

both frustrating and fascinating, tangible and elusive, much

like modern life in the later nineteenth century.

142 

1874
Catalogue M3
4

1

Claude Monet

The Seine at Argent e uil i874

oil on canvas

55 x 65.2 (21

 5/s x 25 K)

Kunstmuseum Bern, Legat Robert Vatter

Almost evenly divided between earth and sky, this painting

is one of the simplest yet most spacious and evanescent that

Monet completed at Argenteuil. It is filled with quiet contrasts,

beginning with the blind of unruly reeds in the immediate

foreground set against the still waters of the Seine.

Supple, gracious, but highly independent, the reeds rise

from unseen sources, their lithe stems bunched together at the

bottom in a cacophonous group, their upper reaches breaking

free into elegant silhouettes. Each reed seems to emerge from

the river in an individualized way and turn in a different

direction, ensuring the appearance of orchestrated disarray.

Several on the right stand apart from the pack, while the

tallest stretches high enough on the canvas to touch the sliver

of land in the background.

These artful overlaps of near and far and the occasional

penetration of the distant shore by the sharp points of the

parrying plants create essential alliances in the picture while

suggesting unresolved tensions. Monet juxtaposes the intimate,

personalized space of his vantage by the water's edge with the

breathtaking expanse of the river and sky. He pairs humble,

untended nature, as represented by the reeds, with the supposedly rational presence of the human on the opposite bank.

Underscoring these contrasts with great subtlety, he allows

some of the leaves on the foreground reeds to be suspended in

midair, as if floating between two worlds.

Similarly, the land in the background seems poised between

river and sky. It splits the scene into two distinct parts, not on

a strict horizontal but on a barely perceptible diagonal, adding

yet another nuance to a view that initially might seem straightforward. Houses and factories stand solemnly on its shore,

their geometric shapes and insistent verticals the antithesis of

the flickering foliage in the foreground. There is no trace

of nature in this part of the view—no rushes play along its

banks, no trees soften the horizon—just as there is no evidence

of the human in the foreground. Instead, factory chimneys

spout streams of smoke that move resolutely across the sky,

blown parallel to the Seine by what appears to be a brisk, late

afternoon wind.

Ironically, the sky attains its greatest illumination just

above these blue-gray emissions, beginning with gentle pinks

that are then energized by stronger, more generously applied

yellow beiges and whites. This splay of color is created by the

setting sun, which also defines the cloud formation at the left

that pulls the eye up the canvas away from the smoke and land.

The right side of the sky could not be more different.

Rendered with long, soft strokes that stretch horizontally

across the picture before dissipating at the edge, this region

is thinly painted with reduced shades of the same few colors

that appear on the left; so sparingly is the paint applied that

the canvas is visible throughout the area, giving the atmosphere and light Monet has represented here an ethereal quality.

The contrasts in the sky are echoed in the reeds. The ones

to the left are dense, restless, richly impastoed. They have been

painted wet on wet with a wide range of color—deep purple,

olive green, turquoise, yellow green, sea green, light blue.

Those to the right are set down with single strokes of a less

loaded brush. The colors of these reeds, like those in the sky,

are reduced, making their pliant forms appear to vacillate

between physicality and illusion, reality and reflection. As simplified versions of the reeds on the left, these plants are more

distinctive as calligraphic marks and as signs of Monet's ability

to evoke nature's poetry with the most meager of means.

These unaltered touches recall Japanese and Chinese prototypes, an association Monet would have appreciated, given his

admiration for the art of the East and his belief in its ability

to capture the essence of things with a few quick but practiced

gestures. Monet had begun to collect Japanese utyyoe prints

during his years at Argenteuil, and a number of his paintings

from the period contain specific references to their influence

on his aesthetic—Japonnerie of 1875 being the most obvious.

Renoir hinted at his friend's passion for Japanese art and culture

in his portrait of Camille Monet (cat. 16), including a flurry

ofuchiusa fans in the upper left corner.

Like a non-Western artist seeking to reveal distilled

truths about his world, Monet ignores the multiple activities

of Argenteuil's boat basin, which lay just to his right, and

radically reduces the number of pictorial incidents in his

painting. He employs few lighting effects and little atmosphere, concerns that were important to impressionism. He

shows no pleasure seekers, regattas, or modern bridges arcing

through the landscape. In fact, without the turreted house in the

background, the site would be difficult to identify. This house

appears in many images of Argenteuil (see cats. 8 and 52); it

stood at the end of the town's famed promenade.

With the smoking factories and buildings on either side,

the house affirms Monet's roots in the present and his embrace

of a progressive future. At the same time, the distance that the

artist places between himself and those structures, combined

144 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue M5
with the relative emptiness of the rest of the scene, suggests the

opposite could be the case. Instead of celebrating modern life,

Monet may be meditating on the ways in which continuities

coexist with change, the natural with the man-made. He may

also be reflecting on the ways in which the art of the East was

altering the perceptions of the West.

These were weighty concerns for Monet and his contemporaries, and they were not easily resolved. That Monet would

express them with such an unusual combination of clarity

and restraint in this painting is only further testimony to his

perspicuity and willingness to make fundamental contradictions

of his life central to his art.

Detail, cat. 41

146 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

4

2

Auguste Renoir

The Seine at Argenteuil

1888

oil on canvas

51.4 x 64.8 (20 /4 x 251A)

Private Collection

An orange-yellow, Turneresque light pervades this riverscape,

enlivening its jumble of competing forms and penetrating its

depths, making everything appear tantalizingly sculptural and

familiar. At the same time, the view is charged by invisible forces

that reveal the world's inherent incomprehensibility. The foliage

on the trees is energized by the same powers that activate the

cloud-veiled sky. The river is equally vital, its surface heightened

by bold strokes of blues and whites that leap left and right like

schools of darting fish. These marks contrast in color, shape,

and movement with the vertically disposed, squiggling reflections of the mustard yellow masts to the right. Suggesting

the motion of the river and the rocking of the sailboats, these

reflections pull the background forward, where several ducks

swim near a female figure who is crouching in the stern of a

rowboat to reach the water.

Initially, this woman seems to be the only person in the

picture, but two smaller figures stand on the shore under a

large tree on the left, with a fourth on a dock in the distance.

Although marginal, these figures help dispel the faint aura

of alienation that hangs over the inlet, a feeling engendered

primarily by the sailboats. Although the boats appear weighty

and calculated, solemn and substantial, they lie at anchor,

inactive and unmanned. Oriented on diagonals that exit the

scene without impediment, they act like anonymous members

of an urban crowd passing us by. Some almost bump each

other, but they declare their individuality by their differentcolored hulls and singular masts, which rise to staggered heights.

The two rowboats in the foreground contribute to this impression, as their dark, ill-defined shapes jut aggressively into the

space, partly barring our entry by their blunt alignment with

the bottom of the canvas.

Renoir notes further anomalies in this otherwise alluring

view. The large red-and-black hulled boat on the far right, for

example, is radically cropped, but it towers over the white craft

in the foreground. Two masts and a sizable white smokestack

rise behind this larger boat, but from vessels we do not see.

Just as inventive is Renoir's decision to make the closest rowboat

smaller than the one behind it, reversing the norm of perspectival recession. The second boat also appears larger than the

white craft to the right, an unlikely relationship that is forced

by the confrontation between the horizontal extension of the

rowboat and the sharp foreshortening of the sailboat.

These jumps in scale and spacing are evident elsewhere:

in the three trees on the left, or the large tree on the right set

against the smaller grove behind it. The right bank is more

consistent, but the taut, narrow forms of the syncopated masts

provide a counterpoint to the amorphous mass of foliage in the

background. Similarly, the clouds expand and contract, thin

out and change color, without any apparent logic, manifesting

Renoir's sensitivity to the meteorological conditions of the day

and his intention to keep his brushwork as varied as possible.

This variety creates considerable visual interest while attesting

to Renoir's versatility. He also establishes broad connections

between the sky and the forms below, with the clouds swelling

to their highest point directly above the apex of the river before

dipping and rising on the right like the masts below.

These alliances are rare, however, as Renoir prefers the

irregular and the unexpected: the patch of light blue sky

between the trees on the left, the brilliant white at the center

of the composition where the water meets the distant bank,

the flecks of emerald green along the shore on the left. He

likes the enigma of the woman in the foreground. Why is she

alone and what is she doing?

These unresolved, seemingly undisciplined moments in

the painting are symptomatic of Renoir's vision of the world

as being controlled more by the unanticipated than by the

predetermined. He believed in the eccentricity of nature and

the value of working without rigid rules and methods. In his

youth as a porcelain painter, he wanted every mark on the

objects he decorated to be independent and free, every design

unique. Human beings, he felt, should not be bound by

machines, with their emphasis on repetition; they should revel

in the handcrafted and instinctive. These notions became

central to the development of his version of impressionism.

The tension Renoir recognized between tradition and

progress, the individually fashioned and the mass-produced,

was of course that of modern life. And Argenteuil in the late

i88os was more torn than ever between its roots in the rural

past and its embrace of the industrial present. Growing rapidly

as an ambitious Paris suburb, Argenteuil still wanted to be a

site of solace and pleasure, but it could not maintain a viable

equilibrium in this struggle. The appeal of change and its

attendant rewards was simply too great.

Perhaps in keeping with his distaste for the increased role

of machines in his day, Renoir includes no evidence of the industries that had established themselves along the Argenteuil side

of the river on the right, where the turreted house that appeared

in so many previous paintings of the area still stands. Caillebotte,

whom Renoir was visiting when he completed this picture, was

likewise judicious in many canvases of the period, suggesting

their mutual desire to find the idyllic in the ordinary, even if it

had to be carefully extracted or constructed from other realities.

148 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue i

9
43

Claude Monet

The Towpath at Argenteuil, Winter

c.i875

oil on canvas

60 x loo (235/s x 39y»)

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,

Gift of Charles Clifton, 1919

We are standing just off a path that runs along the bank of

the Seine. It is a cold, dank day. Snow has fallen, covering the

landscape with a dusting of white. A lone man in the middle

of the scene walks toward us, while two others huddle some

paces behind him, perhaps in conversation; a fourth stands

alone in the background. These figures are a welcome human

presence in a less-than-hospitable setting, but they are too far

away to offer much of a feeling of connection.

The sense of isolation is increased by the empty foreground

and the unadorned vista. There is no drama here, no engaging

activity to attract our attention, no break in the meandering

line of the river's edge or the more insistent curve of the path

as they disappear into the distance. The only thing that interrupts the muffled silence is a boat in the background that spews

a stream of smoke. Even the steely gray waters of the river are

absolutely still, as are the heavy blanket of purple blue clouds

above. Occupying nearly a third of the picture, these clouds add

substantially to its unassuming character. They also emphasize

the somberness of the moment Monet has chosen to portray.

So unpretentious is the site on this particular winter's day

that one almost wonders why Monet decided to plant his easel

there and paint the view on such an impressive scale. A closer

inspection of the canvas suggests some explanations. First is

the appeal of the patchy white snow in its lively contrast with

the greens and browns of the earth beneath it. With its tonal

purity, the snow gives a freshness to the scene that it might

otherwise lack. Then there is the challenge of depicting the

various textures of the land. To render the ruts and ridges,

View of the Seine at Argenteuil, late nineteenth century

mounds and hollows, Monet had to manipulate his brush like

a virtuoso. The area to the left of the path is especially rugged.

Monet's many impasto touches, set down so differently one

from the other, create compelling effects, confirming yet again

his freedom and inventiveness.

This orchestrated cacophony culminates in a huge bush

that crowns the slope on the left and rises high above the path.

Its branches are silhouetted against the sky, stretching in

myriad directions, their fine tracery providing a counterpart

to the thicker marks that describe the ground below. Like the

solitary figure in the foreground who finds an echo in the

two people behind him, this energized bush is balanced by a

tree farther back along the path and by the spare trees across

the river on the right.

Monet deftly plays the many parts of the painting against

each other, balancing their varied surfaces with aplomb.

He also places them in high relief—both literally and figuratively—by contrasting the land forms with the placid waters

of the river. Nothing disrupts the Seine's silent passage into

the distance. No ripples disturb the reflections of the columnar

trees on the opposite shore. The river is so calm that it almost

appears frozen, a suggestion contradicted only by the movement of the boat.

The boat is a small but telling addition. A craft of industry

and commerce, it automatically subverts the rural charm of

the scene. Without it, Monet's painting would remain modern

by virtue of its style; but its subject, composition, and conceits

would recall generic precedents: Barbizon landscapes by Charles

Daubigny or Camille Corot, for example, or seventeenthcentury river views by Jan van Goyen or Meindert Hobbema.

The appearance of the boat at the apex of the river proclaims

Monet's allegiance to contemporaneity while underscoring his

desire to create new art from the contrasts and contradictions

of his own time and place.

That desire must have been what led him to paint this

location on the eastern edge of Argenteuil. Only a short walk

upriver from the railroad bridge and the heart of town,

which lay just behind him, the area was distinguished by its

simple but unglamorous parts and its ability to evoke the

past while being rooted in the present. The path itself had

actually been the only way to get to Paris prior to the construction of the highway and railroad bridges. It had also

been the route for horses that towed barges up and down the

river before the invention of the steam engine. As a period

photograph suggests (see illustration at left) one could easily

150 
Catalogue ^
be lulled into believing that time was standing still. There are

no buildings in the view, no factories, houses, or other evidence

of the modern world.

Monet contributes to this effect himself. Nothing in his

picture is endowed with special gravity; nothing seems to

aspire to be anything other than itself; nothing, except for

the boat, holds any particular significance—and the boat is

relatively discreet. Monet clearly wanted to press each component into an integrated whole. His low vantage enhances

this impression, as do the rigorously maintained tonal values

and the open access he provides to the scene. Filling more than

half the width of the foreground, the path invites us into the

picture with unfettered ease.

Yet there is something distinctly unpastoral about the

landscape, something that keeps us from believing we are

being led into the past. The boat of course is a product of

modern engineering. But the path too, unlike those in Sisley's

views of the Seine (see cats. 9 and 13), rushes into the depths

of the space with the speed and deliberation of a roadway, not

a country lane. Even more insistent is the way that Monet

renders the features of the land. His aggressive handling of

the paint in these areas suggests the rough and tumble of life.

It is not a scene for peaceful reverie or dreams of days gone by.

There is simply too much tension in the paint, too much

movement, contrast, and nonconformity.

Monet also physically differentiates the road from the land

and water, the bush on the left from the hills beyond, which

themselves differ from the sky. This allows him to affirm the

integrity of each element and to justify its presence and visual

interest. His intention is to take these common, ungainly

forms, even those that might traditionally seem unattractive,

and stake a claim for their place in the lexicon of landscape.

Initially they may not all appear to be worthy of inclusion, but

by selecting a humble site and casting it in an unprovocative

light, he invites us to inspect it more closely and in the process

perhaps discover—as he did—the mysteries and poetry that

lie all around us.

Detail, cat. 43

152 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

44

Claude Monet

The Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argent eut I i875

oil on canvas

60.9 x 81.5 (24 x 32)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Richard Saltonstall

Snow flurries and sunshine—an odd combination of natural

effects to experience in reality much less in an impressionist

picture. But this solemn and at the same time bracing painting,

dating from the fourth winter Monet spent in Argenteuil,

reveals the artist's allegiance to the diverse aspects of his suburban home and to the range of nature's wonders he relished

and ennobled.

It is a blustery, overcast day. Haifa dozen figures walk

up the snow-covered path or along the street in the middle

distance, bent against the wind, trying to shield themselves

from the elements with strained umbrellas, no matter how

unsuccessfully. Snowflakes swirl throughout the lower half of

the scene, while the trees and bushes, especially on the right,

shudder under the weight of the barometric pressure. The

snow has been falling for some time. It has blanketed the

street, covered parts of the roofs of the houses, and collected

on the ledges of the pink and green walls. It has also settled

on the horizontal members of the fence on either side of the

foreground path.

The snow provided Monet with ample opportunity to

enliven his scene, not only through its texture, density, and

temperature but also through its varied responses to light.

Some areas of the path and street appear to glow, while others

have absorbed the blue-gray tonalities of the sky and appear

deeper and more somber. Such subtle effects, especially in a

landscape that is for the most part evenly illuminated, attest to

Monet's sensitivity to the ways that snow reveals itself under

these unusual conditions.

More obviously, the snow establishes a compelling contrast

with the larger constituents of the site—the fences, houses,

walls, and trees—all of which appear darker in comparison.

The snow is far from pure, however, at least that which has

already fallen. The middle of the path has been packed down

by pedestrians, while the edges are a bit scruffy. The hill at the

left, marked by many blotches of brown, blue, and gray, was

either never completely covered because of its uneven surface

or it was disturbed by some previous activity. The top of the

tree on the right is bare, whereas the branches on the bottom

are laden with snow.

This general lack of consistency may reflect what Monet

confronted when he was painting, but he used the variations

to enrich his picture visually and to suggest certain meanings.

The snow helps to delineate areas that are highly geometric:

the semicircular hill, a triangular area of foliage on the right,

the hourglass of the path and street, the rectangular walls and

the irregular rooflines of the houses. The disorder of nature is

constrained by human-imposed order. Monet marshals these

forms to create further tensions, especially where the rounded

hill and the triangle of foliage impinge on the path while outlining its boundaries. The two shapes push and pull against

each other while stretching to fill the illusionary space. The

houses and trees continue the contrasts, as they are distinguished

by type, size, and location.

Such differences undoubtedly existed more or less as Monet

portrayed them, but he chose a vantage point to reveal and

emphasize them, then gave them their dynamic by employing

a highly intelligent compositional strategy. They remind

us that nature may be varied and difficult to define but that

human actions pose similar problems, particularly at that

stage in the later nineteenth century when the only certainty

was change itself.

Nowhere was change more apparent than in Argenteuil,

which had grown rapidly during Monet's time there. The site

seen in this painting is emblematic of these shifting realities.

The path in the foreground led to the railroad station, directly

behind us. The houses along the street were new; when Monet

arrived four years earlier, they did not exist. The property

had been open land owned by a single individual, the same

Emilie-Jeanne Aubry who rented Monet his first house, which

is the large home in the center of the picture. Monet therefore

heard and saw these houses rise. Even more to the point, in

1874 he moved into the one on the far right, with its sharply

angled roof and smart green shutters. He did not have to

travel far to paint this picture. That he would create an image

of such contrast and resolve makes sense. This was his neighborhood, his world, one that was in the process of being

transformed, putting particular pressure on the place as well

as on anyone who lived there.

To Monet it was clearly a worthy subject to commit to

canvas. Like the pedestrians struggling against the elements

with a destination in mind, he was facing the challenges of

being a landscape painter at a time of radical change. Not surprisingly, the view is thoroughly modern and yet as rigorous

as one by Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain. It proves Monet's

continued ability to balance the new and the old, the human

and the natural, assuring us that they could indeed be harmonious, despite—or perhaps because of—the transformations

of contemporary life.

'54

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue !55
45

Gustave Caillebotte

Landscape at Argenteuil

1889

oil on canvas

6o x 73 (23 % x 28 K)

Private Collection

This view of Argenteuil is unique in Caillebotte's oeuvre;

it also has no parallel in the work of any other artist who

painted in the suburb in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Its rarity derives mainly from the vantage

Caillebotte has selected. He is standing on the opposite side

of the Seine, at a considerable distance from the town. The

spire of the Eglise de Notre-Dame, Argenteuil's newly constructed church, rises just under the lower boughs of the

tall trees in the center. The rolling hills in the background,

which run from Sannois to Orgemont, confirm the location.

Caillebotte depicted one of these hills in his rendering of

the highway bridge at Argenteuil (see cat. 29). For this painting he is looking northeast; the Seine, though blocked by

trees, runs horizontally through the scene just beyond the

patchwork of fields.

To reach this spot, Caillebotte turned left after leaving his

house, which lay directly across the Seine from the Argenteuil

church. He then walked around the lie Marante, suggested by

the dense grove of trees in the middle ground to the right of the

steeple, and climbed a hill that appears in the foreground. This

hill was the highest point in what was otherwise a relatively

flat area. The rise afforded a stunning view, but Caillebotte

does not maximize this advantage. Instead he fills nearly half

of the canvas with the plateau itself, its midsection pushing

into the center of the scene like the bow of an immense boat,

its tip defined by nearly identical trees whose foliage begins

at the horizon, thus linking the foreground with the background. The outline of the plateau echoes that of the distant

hills, though rising and falling more radically.

Caillebotte, like so many precursors from the seventeenth

century onward, wants to create an ideal landscape, where

humanity is accorded a sympathetic and appropriate place.

He nestles the region of greatest human activity between the

plateau and the background hills. Although this is only a

narrow strip between undeveloped expanses, it is in harmony

with the rest of the picture. Well-tended fields at the foot of

the plateau, with sharp geometries and contrasting colors, give

evidence of the hand of local farmers. The verdant, fertile land

appears to have been cultivated for centuries, a witness to the

long, productive relationship between the site and its occupants.

A large house to the right of the two central trees reinforces

this, as it sits grandly but fittingly in its tree-buffered space

below the church, its face warmed by the same sun that

rewards the landscape as a whole. Behind the house, curtains

of green stretch to either side, occasionally parting to reveal

more modest structures in Argenteuil across the river.

There is nothing disruptive here, no smokestacks or

dominating buildings, no crowds, tourists, or leisure pastimes—

just bountiful nature. The elements of the site are so wedded

to one another that they compensate for the limits Caillebotte

has imposed on the panorama. The two trees in the center,

which are veritable duplicates, attract particular attention.

Standing starkly alone, they are merged at the top by means

of their foliage and supported at the base by similarly disposed,

conical bushes. They break the sweep of the view and act

both as spatial demarcators and as surrogates for Caillebotte

and us, energized by the light that also bathes the plains and

observing the pervasive unity of the setting.

Like Constable in the Stour Valley and Dedham Vale or

Claude Lorrain in the Italian campagna,*Caillebotte fashions

this unity in a highly conscious way, coercing each part of the

landscape into a dialogue with the rest. At the same time he

allows room for nature's vagaries: the rustling grass in the

foreground, the play of darting light and shade throughout

the scene, the various tones of blue in the sky that suggest its

vastness. Caillebotte distinguishes each component by texture.

The foreground is a medley of staccato-like brush strokes,

the fields are defined by flatter, more elongated touches, the

sky realized by diagonal sweeps of aggressively applied

diluted pigment.

Monet left Argenteuil more than ten years before

Caillebotte painted this view, apparently disenchanted by its

transformation from a picturesque suburb to an increasingly

industrialized, working-class town. Caillebotte stayed in the

area, largely because he was an avid sailor and could indulge

his passion for the sport at his very doorstep. In a painting

such as this, however, he also suggests that the region could

still engender the kind of reverie Monet seems to have found

only in more rural locations—first in Vétheuil, then in Giverny.

This was the only time Caillebotte created an idyll of

these proportions in which Argenteuil itself appears. Perhaps

he knew that it was myth-making. That may also explain

why this picture is so reminiscent of past art. It would be

natural for Caillebotte to want the place he called home to

nourish his work as much as possible, even if he had to invoke

the preindustrial vision of his predecessors to accomplish that

end, thus contradicting the evidence that surrounded him.

56 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
Catalogue 1

57
46

Claude Monet

Woman with a Parasol—Madame Monet and Her Son i875

oil on canvas

loo x 81 (39/8 x 3i7/x)

National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Silhouetted against a dazzling, azure blue sky, Monet's wife,

Camille, and their eight-year-old son, Jean, stand high above

us atop a hill whose dramatic presence is enhanced by the rich

color and forceful brushwork that Monet employs to suggest

its dense, unkempt character. We are clearly en plein air on a

late spring or early summer day, when the air is crisp and

clean and the earth joins with the sky to celebrate nature's

consummate splendor.

The tousled ground cover in the foreground begins the

revelry as it climbs a third of the way up the picture, culminating in the rhythmic energy of the flowers along the horizon.

The upper two-thirds of the painting are filled with intense

light and an almost palpable atmosphere, making everything

except for the figures appear to be in motion. The clouds in

the background stream across the sky, so charged that they

cannot maintain their shapes or integrity. Camille's veil is

lifted by the caressing zephyrs and flung out behind her,

while her dress is pulled around her in the opposite direction,

enlivened by the sunlight that cascades down her back and

dances along the edges of her jacket and skirt. Although it is

supposedly white, her fashionable gown is transformed by

Monet's artistry and the colors of the landscape, which prompt

it to glow with reflected tones of buttercup yellow, soft violet,

and deep blue.

Elegant and imposing, Camille dominates the scene, her

body in profile, her head turned to meet the eyes of all who

look at her. Her arms are pressed tightly against her sides,

both hands clasping the handle of a parasol that she directs to

the left to shield herself from the sun, which we do not see

but which appears to be almost directly overhead.

Occupying a subordinate position to her left, Jean also

stares out at the viewer, although he does not have to turn

his head to do so. Unlike his mother, he stands more or less

parallel to the picture plane, his almond-shaped face protected

from the sun by his wide-brimmed straw hat, its edge turned

down. This casualness is echoed in the loose collar of his sporty

boater shirt, his skewed tie, and his relaxed pose, complete

with hands in pockets.

The greatest informality, however, is found in the extraordinary way Monet describes the vast, boundless space of the sky.

No two areas are alike, as Monet's brush dips, turns, rises,

falls, scuds, flips, rushes left, right, diagonally, each time with

varying amounts of paint. It is as if he were trying to suggest

the infinite manifestations of light and air, those invisible,

intangible forces that activate the site and define the moment.

Most surprising perhaps are the large parts of the sky that

have not been covered, notably the section below Camille's

parasol and the vertical rectangle along the right edge of the

picture beginning at her waist and continuing down to the top

of the hill. How daring these voids are—and how modern!

They look ahead to what Clyfford Still would do on a much

larger scale in the 19505. And like the abstract expressionists'

strategies, they make the painting appear to be unfinished.

Monet was entirely capable of rendering clouds, but he evidently

wanted to use the canvas itself as an expressive element in

the image. Harnessing its rawness to heighten the impact of

his seemingly spontaneous paint application, he provides yet

another reminder of the illusionary basis of his craft. He insists

with a kind of startling forthrightness that the only things that

are real about the scene he is depicting are the paint and the

support; everything else is merely a fabrication.

The empty areas also allude to the impossibility—despite

the artist's virtuosity—of actually capturing light, air, and a

particular instant in time, as had been Monet's lifelong goal.

These aspects of nature are too elusive to be locked into the

physical medium of paint. They can only be suggested, as

Monet asserts over and over again in his deeply felt images of

the visible world. His honesty is as refreshing as it is modern.

It is akin to the way his family stares at him—as well as at

the viewer—posing blunt questions about the meaning of

our relationship to the construct Monet has created and the

relevance of our actions in a realm of our own making.

i THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL 58
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Claude Monet

The Gladioli

c. 1876

oil on canvas

55.9 x 82.6 (22 x 32/2)

The Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase

Glorious in its light and color, almost fragrant from its wealth

of flowers, this scintillating painting is at once rational and

impossible, recognizable as an avant-garde genre scene and

yet resistant to easy classification. Tantalizing and sensuous,

contradictory and confusing, it vacillates between extremes,

defining a distinctly new, modern space for Monet to describe

the dialectics of his art and life.

The site depicted is the backyard of his second house in

Argenteuil, a grand garden that Monet tended lovingly after

signing a lease on the property in October 1874. He painted

it only about six times prior to this canvas, always with the

sumptuousness evident here. Yet few of the earlier pictures

are as seductive and jarring.

The composition is divided into four discrete areas: the

cropped circular flowerbed in the foreground, the complementary arc of the beige path on the left, the rectangular

trellis and bed ofrecí roses in the background, and the corresponding, though slightly smaller, rectangular section of

darker foliage to the right. The parts are carefully balanced

to create a sense of absolute harmony. Each is also artfully

subdivided to increase the visual appeal of the whole.

Monet marshals the light to equal effect. It flickers

throughout the scene, touching every element. Each responds

accordingly, from the millefiori tapestry of grass and carnations

at the lower left to the gladioli that twist and turn in the center,

their stems taut and erect. The roses in the background are

pulled from their dark green bed toward the light-filled foreground, their reds continuing in the flowers across the path.

Light warms the path and outlines the form of the well-dressed

woman—presumably Monet's wife, Camille—while edging

her parasol in a brilliant white that sets off the cool green of

its silk interior. That highlighting repeats the shapes of the

fluttering wings of the butterflies. Like several of these buoyant

creatures, Camille hovers at the intersection of the curving

flowerbeds and the path and suggests many of the contradictions in the picture: she is both female and flowerlike, alive

and statuesque, just as the rest of the image weds aspects of

the artificial and the organic.

The painting contains other curiosities as well. Camille

was taller than the gladioli but appears miniaturized by them

here. She stares straight out at the viewer yet remains reserved

and contained, especially compared to everything else in the

garden. While she is presumably proceeding to the left, she

can be perceived as being pinned like a captive butterfly against

the crisscrossed pattern of the trellis behind her. Is she a vision,

or is she real? Is she breathing, or merely a fabrication of the

artist? Is she a personification of nature, or a projection of

some deep, cryptic desire?

These questions are not unlike those that Antoine Watteau

and his followers posed in the eighteenth century in their views

of elegantly dressed figures cavorting in landscape settings.

Monet greatly admired Watteau, whose Embarkation for Cythera

was one of his favorite paintings. It is therefore not unreasonable to suspect that Monet wanted to modernize such fêtes

galantes and to imbue them with the mysteries of his own

contradictory world.

This connection goes a long way toward explaining the

tensions that Monet establishes between the foreground and

background, the physical surface of the painting and the

illusory space it describes. The foreground bed of flowers, for

example, for all of its veracity, is almost impossible to accept

as real. It tips up so radically that it could take over the whole

scene or, conversely, slip out of the picture and tumble into

our realm. The path too rises precipitously, contributing to

Camille's weightless, lightly poised appearance.

What are we to make of the division in the background

between the trellis and the undefined foliage? There is no

logical explanation for the break and no sense of how the

two areas relate spatially. And what about the triangular

shadow in the left foreground? Deriving from an unseen

source, it cuts the gentle arc of the path into two opposing

segments, then creeps up the outside ring of grass. And what

about our own relationship to the landscape? We are both a

part of it and removed from it, much as is Camille. Invited

and rejected, seduced and surprised, we are not given clear

guidelines as to how to respond or read the work. Is the

painting ultimately about the beauties we can find in our

own backyards, or the fantasies that modern life can inspire?

Is it a celebration or a questioning? Departing from his earlier

views of his garden (see cat. 17), Monet, mimicking life itself,

provides no sure answers.

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Gustave Caillebotte

Dahlias: The Garden at Petit Gennevilliers 189?

oil on canvas

157 x 114 (6iK x 447/«)

Anonymous lender

One of the delights of living in the suburbs of Paris in the

nineteenth century was being close enough to visit the city

whenever one desired and yet having a house and garden

that were the antithesis of urban strain and squalor. Cartoonists

poked fun at new residents of the ever-expanding towns

around the capital, finding particular pleasure in mocking

those who had produced some horticultural wonder that

begged to be admired. Honoré Daumier was especially sage

at this game, as were satirists like Gustave Doré.

When the various impressionists settled in the environs

of the city and painted their new homes or those of friends,

they took their task seriously, producing pictures that championed the attractions of suburban living. Among the most

committed were Caillebotte and Monet, the latter having

settled in Argenteuil more than a decade before his friend

moved to the area. Caillebotte made up the difference, however,

when he purchased property in Petit Gennevilliers in 1882

just across the Seine from Argenteuil. He focused much time

and energy on his house and garden, as both a homeowner

Gustave Caillebotte, drawing for Dahlias: The Garden at Petit

Gennevilliers, 1893, graphite on laid paper, Private Collection

and an artist, until his death in 1894. Far wealthier than Monet,

who had left Argenteuil in the late 18705 for the more rural

Vétheuil and subsequently Giverny, Caillebotte pursued his

passions with resources that could satisfy his every whim.

This meticulously rendered painting bears ample witness to

the results. We are in Caillebotte's backyard looking north toward

his house, beyond which lie the Seine and Argenteuil. The

setting is radiant with light and filled with elements of great

visual interest. A place for consumption and contentment, this

garden is also a laboratory for growth and experimentation—

in art as well as horticulture. It would have made even the most

cynical Parisian of the i88os consider a move to the country.

The appeal begins in the immediate foreground, where a

huge stand of dahlias surges up from the bottom of the canvas

to occupy almost a quarter of the view. The sentrylike flowers

block access to the space but at the same time invite detailed

inspection, which provides many rewards. The flowers and

foliage offer an engaging combination of darks and lights, soft

textures and hard, edges and planes, solids and voids. They

set the tone for the work as a whole, where there is much to

relish and more to ponder.

Caillebotte plays the tangle of the foreground flowers

against the clarity of the path on the left, its sharply defined

edge leaving no doubt about the care that has gone into the

landscaping. Like orthogonals in a Renaissance perspective

system (which Caillebotte loved to manipulate), this line draws

us into the garden proper, as do the striking patches of light

along the path. We are then confronted by a small, testy black

dog and a simply dressed woman, who, unlike her canine

companion, takes no notice of our presence. She seems to focus

on something in her hands, but because she clasps them to

her breast she appears to be praying, as if she were an angel or

the Virgin Mary. Caillebotte enhances this suggestion by the

woman's clear outline, bent head, and halolike hat, as well as

by the beauty of her surroundings. This is a kind of hortus

conclusus that he is depicting after all, which makes it the ultimate transposition of the sacred to the secular.

Behind this modern votive figure a boldly lit four-story

house reigns over the scene by its size, location, and color. The

brightness of the early afternoon sun that illuminates its roof

and façade adds even greater clarity to the strong geometries

of its design. Together with the flanking trees, the house closes

off the recession, with branches of a large dark tree near the

garden path seeming to graze its left side. Caillebotte pulls

the house toward the foreground by means of the path and an

imposing greenhouse on the right. The monolithic form of the

162 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
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greenhouse rises nearly two stories from a base that is hidden

by a bank of flowers to its left, while its barrel-vaulted roof

leads out of the space on a diagonal to the right.

That the greenhouse joins the background and foreground

seems fitting. It is where infant plants are nurtured to become

prize specimens like the dahlias. The link between the house,

the greenhouse, and the flowers is implied by neat alignments

that Caillebotte constructs. He makes the left edge of the greenhouse roof slice across a window on the right side of the main

house, then meet the edge of the façade precisely where he

places a single red dahlia blossom. He has two other red flowers

touch a line on the greenhouse wall facing us just before it

exits the scene on the right. That line marks a horizontal axis

that bisects the painting as a whole, passing through the very

point where the greenhouse roof meets the shutter of the house.

Finally, if a vertical line is dropped through the middle of

the house, it ends at the bottom of the picture just where the

mound of the foreground dahlias begins.

Caillebotte disguises these subtle connections behind his

lavishly applied impasto and the dramatic interaction of light

and shade. But his compositional ploys are essential to recognize, because, like all decision making in these images, they

arise from deep feeling and are the bearers of meaning. That

Caillebotte devoted considerable effort to devising the alliances

in this painting is evident from a drawing he made to serve

as a guide (see illustration on p. 162). Almost certainly derived

from previous sketches, and perhaps from photographs that he

often took of his motifs, this drawing is squared for transfer,

enabling the artist to plan how the forms in the scene would

relate in the final composition. He also painted a smaller version of the picture that may have served as a model for the

finished canvas.

Caillebotte's fellow impressionists would not have relied

on such traditional aids to develop their paintings, preferring

to work alla prima, at least in the 18705. (Renoir adopted some

of these methods in the i88os, albeit briefly.) But all were highly

conscious of the ways in which their pictures communicated

information via the internal relationships that they established.

This Eden that Caillebotte has created is not without its

strains—of foreground against background, the human

against the natural—and it is not completely isolated. Over

the greenhouse on the right appears the roof of a neighboring

house, making the garden seem narrower and more cramped

than it would otherwise. The dahlias too take on the character

of an anonymous crowd, pressed closely together and yet

turning away from one another at the same time. As did other

impressionists, Caillebotte experienced the country through

the eyes of a former city dweller, sensitive to its glories but also

to its proximity to the capital of modern culture.

Detail, cat. 48

164 THF. IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

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Auguste Renoir

The Seine at Argenteuil

c.i875

oil on canvas

54 x 65 (21 /4 x 255/a)

Private Collection, Switzerland

This imaginative, almost exotic painting is singular among

those Renoir executed at Argenteuil. Colorful, light dappled,

and airy, it gains its stature not for what it represents but for

the daring of its facture and the novelty of its composition.

It depicts the Petit Bras of the Seine, a site that attracted

every artist who worked at Argenteuil, except for Manet.

Renoir painted it at least three times during his periodic stays

in the town from the 18705 to the 18905; while each version is

engaging in its own way, this is the most delicate and varied

of the group.

The small arm of the Seine arcs into the picture in the

lower left corner and bends around the lie Marante at the left.

It becomes markedly foreshortened as it continues on to meet

the main body of the river in the distance. The waterway

helps us identify the spot, as do the stately poplars on the île

Marante. But it is the houses peeking through the foreground

screen of foliage that confirm the location. They are the same

ones that appear in earlier views of the Petit Bras by Renoir's

fellow impressionists (see cat. 3).

In almost every other rendering of the site, we are invited

to look without impediment down the Petit Bras to the skyline

of Argenteuil on the opposite side of the Seine. In this painting,

however, Renoir complicates that offering, filling most of the

immediate foreground with the waving branches and fluttering

foliage of small trees and bushes. He is interested in something

other than just describing the landscape as it existed in the

iSyos. And his conceits make this image more than simply an

evocation of the particular effects of light and atmosphere

he may have observed when he began to paint. Like a hunter

behind a blind, Renoir looks out on his motif with focused

intensity, but he insists that the view is not his primary concern

as an artist. If it were, he would not have obscured it with

the foreground folly.

The undergrowth in the foreground is of course not a folly,

for it is rendered with the perspicuity of a seasoned naturalist.

Branches arch and turn, seemingly of their own accord, leaves

appear to flip back and forth as if blown by a brisk wind, and

light flickers across the deftly carved out, semiprivate space.

Everything appears to be in flux, even as this nook seems both

secure and reassuring. The foreground screen, for example,

is virtually impossible to fathom, so energized are its many

components. Note how many kinds of strokes Renoir employs

to describe the myriad diversions in this vegetation. His brush

pushes, stabs, and caresses the canvas, adding layer upon

layer of impasto while allowing each touch to remain distinct.

Expressing nature's defiance of human rationale, the leaves on

the bushes perform an almost ecstatic dance, standing out as

golden yellow flecks against the blue water of the Petit Bras

where it enters the scene at the left. This detail is particularly

poetic, for the leaves seem to float in the air following the fluid

movements of the river; they will soon alight on its surface, to

be carried away by the gentle current. The stiffer forms of the

reeds below are also silhouetted against the water, but they

are more rooted to the bank.

Renoir's painterly bravura continues on the right in the

denser underbrush, where he makes sure we can read the recession of the waterway but encourages us to revel in the diversity

he has discovered in this humble place, so unexpectedly rich in

incident. No two square centimeters of the picture are the same,

yet every nuance seems verifiable and just. The land drops off

where the darker blues and greens appear at the lower right,

then rises sharply to meet the right edge of the canvas just

below an impenetrable thicket that is almost evenly divided,

like the rest of the foreground, between cool blue greens and

warm, light-filled yellows. These bushes are the most thickly

painted of the plant life along the bank. With the equally

compacted foliage on the lie Marante, they frame the view,

lending it a note of understated authority.

The ethereal branches in the middle shimmer with light,

as if to celebrate life and the beauty of the day. Every stroke

Renoir sets down to describe them contributes to this effect,

from the nearly transparent ones that he poses against the

sky to the looping forms of lower branches just to the right of

center. The latter seem to disregard the rhythms of the site

and the orientation of the elements around them. Asserting

their independence as calligraphic entities, they affirm Renoir's

inventiveness and his desire to extend the language of landscape, something he clearly accomplishes in this painterly

phantasmagoria by the banks of the Seine.

While the painting offers us the opportunity to appreciate

nature's tremendous variety, which is the primary purpose of

the genre, it also challenges traditional notions of decorum

and declares visual stimulation to be a goal worth pursuing on

its own terms. Only Renoir and his impressionist colleagues,

who were open to change and sensitive to the contradictory

conditions of modern life, could have devised such a strategy.

It is not surprising that they had such difficulties convincing

conservative critics of its merits. It seemed like reckless and

self-indulgent behavior, but manifestly it was not.

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5°

Claude Monet

The Petit Bras of the Seine

1876

oil on canvas

55 x 75.5(2i 5/«x 29K)

Private Collection, Germany

As Monet's years at Argenteuil waned, he became increasingly

introspective. He turned more and more frequently to his

garden, as if to wall himself off from the outside world. He

also retraced his steps to the nearby Petit Bras of the Seine,

a site that is depicted with marvelous subtlety in this littleknown painting. It was the same vista that had often been the

focus of his attention during his first two years in the town.

Monet's initial infatuation with the place must have owed

something to its pastoral charm. Removed from the activity

of the main body of the Seine and thus from the evidence of

commerce and leisure that the river attracted, the Petit Bras

was a picturesque retreat that evoked a sense of bygone days.

Although its mouth was used as a docking area for pleasure

craft, its shores were refreshingly free of development, and

the trees and bushes along its banks could mask whatever

encroachments might lurk offstage. It was, in short, somewhere one could be in communion with nature, despite

whatever blinders one had to wear to get there.

Barbizon artists in the generation before Monet would

have particularly appreciated this setting, even though bustling

Argenteuil was a mere fifteen-minute walk away and the

rumble of trains to and from Paris every half hour would

inevitably—indeed predictably—disturb whatever state of

reverie the landscape might inspire. No one who visited the

Petit Bras seemed to care about this intrusion, however.

Caillebotte rendered the locale nearly twenty times; one of

Renoir's last views of the town is from this idyllic inlet. Monet

painted it sixteen times during his six years in Argenteuil:

more than half of these canvases were done in 1872; the next

largest number—five—were done in 1876, the date of this

picture. The two groups could not be more different in style,

effect, and meaning.

The first group is actually divided into paintings done in

the late winter or early spring of 1872 and others done that

summer. A sense of innocence pervades the earlier works

(cat. 3). Each element in the countryside seems to have held

Monet's interest, whether it was the lichen along the banks,

the stand of trees on the lie Marante, or the subtle contours of

the earth. Everything was orderly and inviting. Monet's color

scheme and brushwork supported these effects. His palette

was subdued, surfaces were held in check with disciplined

brush strokes and a minimum of impasto; even the light was

tempered, as were the waters of the inlet. There was no sign

of Argenteuil's recreational activities. Rather, the Barbizon

aura of the landscape had the upper hand. In contrast, the

images from the summer of 1872 depicted a transformed site.

Pleasure boats filled the neck of the waterway, color was

heightened, brushwork vigorous; everything seemed vibrant

and dazzling. Barbizon was a distant memory; the modern

held sway.

In 1876 Monet reverted to the strategies of his first paintings of 1872. Every view focuses either across the water or

away from Argenteuil and the Seine. None includes houses,

recreational boats, or modern landmarks. It is as if Monet had

stepped out of the contradictions of his contemporary present

into some bucolic remnant of another era.

In this quiet tableau reeds occupy the immediate foreground, providing a sense of place but no actual footing. Monet

articulates the individual stalks with the clear and deliberate

strokes of a moderately loaded brush. Their proximity and

position in the composition imply a viewpoint close to the

ground, which is sympathetic to the unpretentiousness of the

scene. Nothing is lively or dramatic, except for the engaging

pattern of the reeds. Their sprightly forms give way to a slice

of water that leads rapidly toward the horizon. Its strong

recession contrasts with the vertical accents in the foreground,

as does its tranquil surface, which Monet keeps well below

the midpoint of the canvas.

On the right rise the trees of the lie Marante, their foliage

lush and full, although their autumnal glow is being softly

wrapped in the shadows of approaching twilight. Unlike

Monet's first representation of the area in 1872 from virtually

the same vantage (cat. 3), this painting shows the trees pulled

into the upper right-hand corner, which increases the angle of

their descent across the picture plane and our perception of

their speedy disappearance into the distance. Comparison with

the earlier rendering reveals how faithful to the site Monet

remained. The same single tree stands at the end of the line on

the right; to the left is the same row of more separated trees.

There is something at once more forceful and more elegiac

here than in the earlier view. It involves the denser foliage and

undergrowth that Monet includes and their dominating role

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in the picture. It also relates to the more energized sky, with

its blanket of more heavily worked clouds. Finally, it derives

from the absence of humans in the scene or any suggestion of

their presence. Closed off by the trees and foliage, the space

appears more contained and introspective. At the same time

it seems more strained.

By 1876 Monet had seen enormous changes in Argenteuil

that caused its initial appeal to wither and his own urge for

fulfillment to increase in inverse proportion. Turning more

frequently to his garden, he found a haven of peace and repose

that he could control. Similar rewards awaited him along the

Petit Bras. Despite the developments across the Seine and

the continued invasion of pleasure seekers, its grace was still

resonant. Nearly two decades later it remained a source of

solace for Caillebotte, who painted it shortly before his death in

the 18905. By then Monet had left its shores behind, opting

for inspiration much farther from Paris, where the beauties of

nature were more plentiful than just a single sweet holdover

from the past.

Detail, cat. 50

170 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

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Gustave Caillebotte

The Petit Bras of the Seine

1888

oil on canvas

75 x ico (29/2 x 393/«)

Mr. and Mrs. Trammell Crow

Only an artist completely devoted to nature, with an aesthetic

informed equally by the powers of past art and the marvels

of contemporaneity, could have painted this picture, so deeply

lyrical but verifiable is it. If a nineteenth-century poet wanted

to sing the praises of summer or a lexicographer wanted to

define particular qualities of the season, this image could

have been their guide. It is a heartfelt distillation of an ideal

summer's day.

Delicate, precise, and subtly charged, it also depicts what

the suburbs of Paris offered the harried urban dweller, even in

the late i88os when Caillebotte signed and dated this canvas.

That was long after the first wave of development had washed

across this once-rural land and more than a decade after Monet

had left Argenteuil. Caillebotte's painting is proof that the

town—more specifically, the nearby Petit Bras of the Seine—

had not lost its allure or its sense of being far from the city.

Only a short walk from Caillebotte's property in Petit

Gennevilliers, the inlet was a pristine vestige of times past

and was highly popular among painters. Caillebotte painted it

more often than any avant-garde artist working in the region.

This is certainly one of his most exquisite views of the site.

Every detail seems called into being by a touch that is both

calculated and gentle. Sure and deliberate, Caillebotte was also

immensely sensitive to the nuances of the landscape. The bank

on the left, for example, is rendered with countless marks

that vary in size, orientation, and consistency. Each is just as

convincing in its description of the texture, contour, and flow

of the land, while each seems to carry in its physical presence

a sense of Caillebotte's enchantment.

Caillebotte's attention is particularly evident in the way he

has aligned the parts of the composition. The bank at the left,

which fills the immediate foreground, rises on a graceful curve

from the artist's vantage on the left to the midpoint of the

picture's height. There it is crowned by a row of poplars,

whose slender forms are echoed by less regimented trees in

the distance. Caillebotte individualizes the trees, just as he

demarcates the sections of the bank by physical breaks or

changes in grade or direction. The poplars serve almost as

sentinels, adding drama and definition to the scene while

confirming the unstated influence of the human beings who

planted them.

Caillebotte positions the towering tops of these trees so

that they seem to touch the bottom of a long, horizontally disposed cloud. This unlikely cylindrical form is one of a series

of clouds suspended in the rich blue sky. A dense row of trees

on the right closes off the view with muffled authority, rising

from a line of rounded bushes that runs along the edge of

the river. These trees form a large triangle that fills the upper

right half of the canvas and leads definitively to the deepest

point in the space, just to the left of center, which is precisely

where the placid waters of the inlet disappear.

This arrangement of parts is very satisfying and is enhanced

by the light that fills the scene. Coming from directly overhead

through air that is crystal clear, the light seems palpable, even

life-giving. It touches virtually every element in the landscape,

making each glisten or glow. The trees and bushes on the right

appear particularly receptive, their branches reaching up

toward the sun and sky.

Confronted with such a seductive, carefully considered

picture, it is difficult to understand how impressionism could

have sparked the controversy it did. By 1888, however, it was

entangled in its own challenges. More than twenty years old by

then, it had lost members such as Camille Pissarro to the ranks

of the neo-impressionists led by the younger Georges Seurat.

It had also felt the rebuke of protégés such as Paul Gauguin

who were painting in a more abstract style and staking strident

claims to the leadership of French art. Caillebotte understood

those pressures. A work such as this is his candid response,

an uncompromising affirmation of impressionism's principles

set down with undaunted faith and boundless beauty.

172 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL
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2

Claude Monet

Argenteuil, the Banf^ in Flower

1877

oil on canvas

54 x 65 (21 /4 x 255/s)

Private Collection, Japan

Monet was continually drawn to paint the promenade along

the Seine during his years at Argenteuil, which suggests that

it held special meaning for him. This attraction began his

first summer in the town, when it seems to have held all of

the promise he expected from his new suburban home (cat. 8).

In each of those early pictures crisp, clear shapes were locked

into relationships of great resolve. They were warmed by

caressing light and liberally applied pigments of distinct,

unmingled color. Everything appeared to have its place; everything was inviting and reassuring.

It is perhaps fitting that during his last summer in

Argenteuil Monet returned to the promenade and took up a

position along the bank that afforded him the opportunity to

paint the scene again. He included the same features that had

made the site so appealing in the beginning: the tall, thickly

foliated trees, the turreted house, the stretch of the Seine, and

the lie Marante in the distance. People still walk along the

path, and two boaters take to the river.

But Monet's view in 1877 differs dramatically from his

earlier depictions. Instead of the path that once welcomed us

into the landscape, the foreground is now clogged with a

tangle of flowers and undergrowth. Across the entire canvas,

red and white roses bob on a sea of darkened stems that themselves rise out of an indeterminate foliage. So dense is this area

that light has trouble entering it. The thicket blocks our access

too. At the same time a small wooden fence cuts across the

lower right corner on an angle, its thin pickets like stems

plucked from the neighboring vegetation or like miniature

versions of the smokestacks in the background. What is this

fence or the garden doing in a public arena?

The mass of flowers and foliage divides the composition

in half and allows no smooth transition between the two parts.

The Seine flows out from behind the twisting stems, while the

bank climbs up abruptly on the right. What we appear to be

seeing is the junction of two separate worlds—one in which we

stand, in front of the screen of flowers, the other containing the

town beyond, with its many offerings and continued mystique.

In the latter realm Monet links the top of the bank with the

bottom edge of the houses and factories in the background,

aligning them as well with the woods on the lie Marante. The

water glows with the reflection of the golden, Turneresque

light of the setting sun, while the land is cast in shadow, its

more distant forms shrouded in a purple gray mist that blurs

all particulars, making them seem eerie and intriguing.

The logical delineation of shapes and spaces that had

distinguished Monet's earlier paintings of this site is here

seriously compromised. Although the picture is held together

with equal intelligence, it is not as easily read. A number of

telling details help unravel the enigma. First, the presence of

people on the promenade suggests that Argenteuil continues

to attract those looking for diversions. Second, the looming

house in the background remains an object of importance, its

tower framed by factory chimneys on either side and echoed

by the steamboat that puffs out a trail of smoke. This is still a

community where industry and nature coexist and maintain

a measure of appeal.

The light in the background, however, is utterly sublime,

offering an almost impossible contrast to the darkness below.

Is it real, or is it an illusion? This question may be asked of the

whole scene. What is fact and what is fiction? The foreground

thicket asserts itself as the boldest reality. In addition to its

scale and immediacy, it is the most powerfully painted element

in the view. Constructed from innumerable brush strokes, its

impassioned marks seem to bear witness to Monet's emotional

state as well as to his painterly bravura. The brush blots, swirls,

skips, and curls across the surface with no apparent order or

forethought. This freedom, which contrasts with the evenly

rendered background, is precisely what one would expect from

a contemporary artist bent on renovating tradition.

Freedom was also assumed to be central to a town like

Argenteuil, which was an escape for the urban pleasure seeker.

On a higher level the experience of freedom—from routines,

hierarchies, or social restraints—was supposed to inspire

discovery and renewal, perhaps a keener awareness of oneself

and the world. That was certainly an aspect of being an

impressionist in the 18705. Monet understood this. He had

consistently dealt with these dimensions of his art and life in

his work at Argenteuil, although never like this. Moody and

introspective, this painting seems to pit one kind of liberty

against another: the unfettered foreground flowers against

the vast domain beyond, hedonism versus reverie, personal

indulgence against shared experience. There is another side to

these contrasts, however. The flowers in the foreground are

hardly alluring; the tallest arch up as if trying to escape the

darkness that binds them. But they are spent, their petals

fallen. And the light they seek is fading. The work is steeped

in nostalgia and longing, just as it trumpets independence and

expansiveness. These contradictory readings become most

THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL 
Catalogue 1

75
poignant when we realize that the flowers are actually part

of the luminous world in the distance. The fence separates

them from us and ensures their partnership with a place that

may still give rise to golden illusions. But Monet knew after

his years in Argenteuil that the suburb was hopelessly torn

between the dichotomies of modern life—being both city and

country, workaday and vacation spot, agrarian and industrial.

The town had been divided since the coming of the railroad

in the 18505. Some twenty years later the split was even more

pronounced, which is undoubtedly one reason for the radical

partitioning of Monet's canvas. Progress, which the artist had

celebrated in his early years at Argenteuil, especially in the

mate to this work (cat. 8), was no longer a reliable ally. It had

drastically altered the landscape, and with it, Monet's relationship to this ruptured but bountiful municipality.

Soon after completing this foreboding painting, Monet

left Argenteuil for good. After stints in other Paris suburbs,

he finally settled in Giverny, a refuge that was everything

Argenteuil was not.

Detail, cat. 52

i76 THE IMPRESSIONISTS AT ARGENTEUIL

Index of Paintings in the Exhibition

Boudin, The Seine at Argenteuil (cat. i), 42

Caillebotte, The Argenteuil Bridge and the Seine (cat. 29), 116

Caillebotte, Boats on the Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 12), 70

Caillebotte, Dahlias: The Garden at Petit Gennevilliers

(cat. 48), 162

Caillebotte, Factories at Argenteuil (cat. 25), 106

Caillebotte, Landscape at Argenteuil (cat. 45), 156

Caillebotte, Laundry Drying (cat. TO), 64

Caillebotte, The Petit Bras of the Seine (cat. 51), 172

Caillebotte, The Promenade at Argenteuil (cat. 7), 56

Caillebotte, Richard Gallo and His Dog Dic/^ at Petit

Gennevilliers (cat. 36), 132

Caillebotte, The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers (cat. 23), 100

Manet, Argenteuil (cat. 34), 126

Manet, Boating (cat. 40), 142

Manet, Claude and Camille Monet in His Studio Boat

(cat. 39), 140

Manet, The Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 35), 130

Monet, Argenteuil, the Ban\ in Flower (cat. 52), 174

Monet, The Artist's House at Argenteuil (cat. 18), 88

Monet, The Ball-Shaped Trees, Argenteuil (cat. 37), 136

Monet, The Boat Basin at Argenteuil (cat. 11), 68

Monet, The Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil (cat. 5), 52

Monet, The Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil (cat. 44), 154

Monet, A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias (cat. 20), 92

Monet, Frost on the Plains of Colombes (cat. 22), 98

Monet, The Garden (cat. 17), 84

Monet, The Gladioli (cat. 47), 160

Monet, The Highway Bridge and Boat Basin (cat. 28), 114

Monet, The Highway Bridge under Repair (cat. 2), 46

Monet, Houses at the Edge of the Field (cat. 24), 104

Monet, The Petit Bras of the Seine (cat. 3), 48

Monet, The Petit Bras of the Seine (cat. 50), 168

Monet, The Promenade at Argenteuil (cat. 8), 60

Monet, The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil (cat. 26), no

Monet, The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil (cat. 27), 112

Monet, Regatta at Argenteuil (cat. 30), 118

Monet, Sailboats at Argenteuil (cat. 32), 122

Monet, The Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 41), 144

Monet, The Seine at Petit Gennevilliers (cat. 14), 74

Monet, The Studio Boat (cat. 38), 138

Monet, The Towpath at Argenteuil, Winter (cat. 43), 150

Monet, Woman with a Parasol—Madame Monet and Her Son

(cat. 46), 158

Renoir, Madame Monet and Her Son in Their Garden at

Argenteuil (cat. 21), 96

Renoir, Monet Painting in His Argenteuil Garden (cat. 19), 90

Renoir, Portrait of Camille Reading (cat. 16), 80

Renoir, Portrait of Monet (cat. 15), 78

Renoir, Regatta at Argenteuil (cat. 31), 118

Renoir, Sailboats at Argenteuil (cat. 33), 122

Renoir, The Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 42), 148

Renoir, The Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 49), 166

Sisley, Banf^s of the Seine at Argenteuil (cat. 13), 72

Sisley, The Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil (cat. 4), 51

Sisley, The Bridge at Argenteuil (cat. 9), 63

Sisley, La Grande Rue, Argenteuil (cat. 6), 54

78
Photographie credits

Argenteuil Archives, fig. 2

© 1999 Art Institute of Chicago, cat. 18

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, fig. 8

Joachim Blauel, photographer, fig. 20

Philip A. Charles, photographer, cat. 52

© 1999 Christie's Images, Ltd., figs. 26, 30, 34, cat. 30

© Clark Art Institute, cat. 16

© Detroit Institute of Arts (Dirk Bakker, chief photographer),

cat. 47

Durand-Rhei, photographer, cat. 13

© Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (McDonald,

photographer), fig. 21

© The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, cat. 2

Courtesy Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Ltd., fig. n

© Indiana University Art Museum (Michael Cavanagh and

Kevin Montague, photographers), fig. 24

© Indien van Toepassing, Amsterdam, cat. 38

Peter Lauri, Bern, photographer, cat. 41

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, cat. 40, and comparative

figure for cat. 21

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, cat. 17

Musée du Vieil Argenteuil, figs. 3 (Muriel Penpeny,

photographer), 10, 28, and comparative figure for cat. 7

© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, cat. 44

© National Gallery of Art, Washington, figs. 14, 16, 18, 23,

cats, i, 4, 8, 15, 20, 2i, 28, 31, 46

Norfolk Museums Service, cats. 6, 23

Pinakothek München, fig. 22

© Portland Art Museum, cat. 33

Pro Lab, Photo Media, cat. 22

Rheinisches Bildarchiv, cat. 10

© Photo RMN, fig. 19; cat. 7 (Arnaudet, photographer); fig. 15,

cats, ii, 25 (Hervé Lewandowski, photographer)

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Jôrg P. Anders, photographer),

cat. 24

© Collection Viollet, Paris, figs. 5, 27, 31, and comparative

figures for cats. 4, 25, 30/31, 43

Graydon Wood, photographer, fig. 17

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders

for the photographs in this book. Any omissions will be

corrected in subsequent editions.

179