The Fortnightly Flag
5th December 2017
Still life - blue vases Carol Richards 2004
IMPRESSIONISTS IN LONDON
This month's recommended exhibition is Impressionists in London at Tate Britain. It's a bit pricey but well worth it. It's a large exhibition with a great many wonderful paintings on display.
The exhibition looks back to the period of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the Paris Commune of 1871 when a number of French Impressionists headed for the safety and art market of London. Impressionism as a painting style suited them well as they needed to produce works quickly suited to the English market so their output initially was made up of small paintings depicting conventional subjects that might appeal to the middle-class residents of the semi-rural London suburbs they found refuge in.
Pisarro's initial works are quite traditional landscapes, nicely done but a far cry from the pointilliste style of his later pictures of Kew and Hampton Court. I lived for a while in Richmond and have painted a fair few paintings along the riverside. I never tried the full pointilliste style of Pisarro but did pick up one technique they all seem to have adopted, that of using small tick brush-strokes in different colours - blue, grey, green (the river is very green at Richmond) white and silver (gives the river a nice sheen). I don't know if this counts as impressionist but it works a treat giving the impression of light and movement on the surface of the water.
Lots of the paintings, most notably by Monet and Whistler, feature London fog. Oscar Wilde apparently declared Whistler invented it. Not so. I grew up with it. Before the Clean Air Act we still had the real pea-soupers where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Everything came to a standstill and the city was quiet and mysterious and the sunsets over Highgate and Islington Cemetery were breathtaking. What Wilde meant was that nobody has noticed the fog as an artistic effect before Whistler although that is to discount Turner of course.
Having said that, the exhibition has a whole roomful of Monet's paintings of the Houses of Parliament with and without sunsets which are simply miraculous.
There are a great many paintings by Tissot who has been one of my favourite artists since my mother gave me a print of 'The Captain's Lady' which hung on the wall in my flat for many years until the frame got broken in a move. I am in awe of Tissot's ability to paint straight lines not only in his maritime pictures (check out the rigging) but also in the large painting of visitors outside a London church - the steps and the fluted columns all dead straight.
Tissot is not strictly an impressionist. He painted finely detailed pictures beautifully finished in classical style. He might have been a bit aggrieved to find himself lumped with the Impressionists as he painted in a very different style although he moved in the same circle.
Another artist represented in the exhibition who is similarly not really an impressionist is the sculptor Dalou. Dalou was a Communard who came to London in 1871 when, after the collapse of the Paris Commune, he would not have found much work in Paris. He taught in London with Alphonse Legros and from the examples of their work on show I would say they had a marked influence on Mary Bromet whom I mentioned in my last blog. Dalou was rather annoyed that his customers preferred his more sentimental works but they do have an extraordinary sweetness.
THE LADY IN GREY
The artists who were refugees in London did not reflect what was going on in their homeland except for a tinge of homesickness. That was left to the artists who stayed. Manet was conscripted into the National Guard and he produced two prints illustrating the trauma of war - a picture of a casual execution and a powerful image of a dead soldier. Tissot was trapped in Paris throughout the siege and only left after the Paris Commune of 1871 made being a bourgeois painter of high society a less than attractive prospect.
Manet's images and Tissot's 'The Wounded Soldier' would have made excellent illustrations for my novel 'The Lady in Grey'.
Originally published in 1988 under the title 'Disciple of Temptation' the novel tells the story of French novelist and short story writer Guy de Maupassant. Like Manet he was conscripted aged 19 and so traumatised by the experience the subject dominated his life and work. The book entailed a lot of research into the Franco-Prussian war.
Why did it appeal to me? Apart from the fact that it is simply a wonderful story it came to me (via my uncle who gave me a copy of Sherard's biography of the writer) it followed a decade of IRA terrorism, miners' strikes and the Poll Tax riots, not quite on a par with the Franco-Prussian War but a fairly unsettled period. Added to which I was taken very ill in 1982 and suffered a long period of excruciating pain for 13 years which was akin to torture except I had no way of making it stop, no secrets to save me. All of which, looking back, must have coloured my choice of subject as up until then I had written mostly comedy.
I did an interview for Chiltern Radio when the book was published and the presenter chose to read a passage from the book. Rather to my surprise he did not pick a passage taken from Maupassant's own words but one where I realised that, although at the time I thought I was writing about Maupassant, I really was writing about myself.
I suppose I was asking the question if a writer has to go through terrible pain in order to create the work is it worth it? If Maupassant, who went through such terrors, had known that over a hundred years later his books would still be read and admired, would he have thought it worth the price he paid?
I'm sorry to say I think he would.
