A ‘magic morning’ was the way that one of our members described the visit to the Impressionist Galleries of the Courtauld Institute.
Our guide took us on a journey through French art from 1865 to 1905.
The first picture we studied was a copy by Manet of his Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. This painting shows a picnic in a naturalistic woodland setting. There are two women, one in the background collecting water and one naked, sitting on the ground with two fully clothed men. This was considered shocking at the time partly because the artist was painting a modern day scene and he included a naked woman. Nakedness was only acceptable in classical art when related to legend and mythology. He also was exploring the idea of peripheral vision and how this could be used in painting by making some areas of the picture less precise and clear.
Next we looked at Manet’s last large painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère 1881-2. Even though the composition seems fairly simple, it also has complex areas and is painted quite sketchily in parts to represent periphery vision. It is a record of modern day at the time it was painted but it has dark undertones with the groups of bottles, triangles, flowers and the two mirrored figures which do not seem to be at the correct angle. The barmaid’s melancholy contrasts with the general air of merriment.
We continued by looking at Lordship Lane Station, Dulwich by Pissaro 1871, La Loge by Renoir 1874, Antibes 1888 by Monet and The Banks of the Seine, Argenteuil 1888 by Monet. These showed contemporary scenes and the development of brushwork and the use of colour.
Cézanne and Gauguin were featured. Gauguin’s evocative paintings from the South Seas Islands revealed dark images with sinister meanings in the back ground and Cézanne’s painting of the plaster ‘putto’ shows his interest in different planes and their relationships which heralded later styles of art.
The next area housed two Van Gogh works, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889, with a Japanese print on the wall and touches of unrealistic colour giving the painting more vibrancy.
The second also shows the Japanese influence and is a landscape depicting an orchard of peach trees. Wonderful to see especially after visiting the recent exhibition at the RA. Seurat’s pointillist paintings were also here.
We were then taken upstairs to look at the work of Derain at the seaside at Collioure 1905. These showed the development in the use of colour by the Fauve painters. The guide answered a question that I have often wanted to ask. Why is cutting edge art from the early part of the last century framed in such hideous frames? He said that the dealers did this to make them more fit into the décor of the homes of the purchasers.
This visit put work by various artists into context, was a chance to study them in greater detail and made me realise how they influenced each other. The richness of the colour and texture contrasted with the exhibition of Michelangelo’s exquisite drawings at the same gallery and Bill Fontana’s River Sounding, an acoustic journey, at the basement level on the far side of Somerset House.