The Artists Are in Revolt

The revolution won't happen overnight, but it's coming. And it will take place in 1874, when the rebels who'll become known as the Impressionists hold their first exhibition in Paris. 

To see how the Impressionists got there, and what they were rebelling against, we've come to Cologne, and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, for an utterly enjoyable exhibition about the art of the 1860s and 70s that found official approval from the French state and from the traditionalist critics -- and the art that didn't.

The show is entitled 1863 Paris 1874: Revolution in Art -- From the Salon to Impressionism, and this is the striking image that greets you as you enter, a painting that we've never seen before (it belongs to the Spanish central bank) but which seems to sum up the entire topic for you in one go. 

The Catalan artist Pere Borrell del Caso actually created this trompe l'oeil in 1874, completely independently of the Impressionists. It wasn't originally called Escaping Criticism, but it acquired the title over time, as it seemed to echo the way modern painters were trying to break the shackles of the official Salon, the annual state-run exhibition of approved art. 

And what the Salon jury wanted was smooth, finely finished painting, the sort of art where you couldn't see the brushstrokes. You could paint nudes, but they had to have a mythological theme, like Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus with its five over-the-top putti, shown at the 1863 Salon. Or at least pretend to have a mythological theme, such as Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry's The Pearl and the Wave (Persian Fable), displayed the same year. 

Baudry's fabled creature makes a seductlvely direct eye contact with the viewer, leading one sarcastic critic to wonder: "Is she lying in wait in this wild landscape for some millionaire who has lost his way?" 

We've seen before how French painters liked to render supposedly realistic Oriental scenes in great detail. This is Jean-Léon Gérôme's Excursion of the Harem, exhibited at the Salon in 1869. Incredibly atmospheric, with a camel train proceeding sedately along the bank almost imperceptibly in the background in that subdued light, beautifully painted -- just look at the reflections on the water -- and of course a complete fabrication. 

More stylised is Laurent Bouvier's The Egyptian, from the same year, in which a statuesque model remarkably free of body hair and clad in the skimpiest of washing-powder white loincloths holds a basket of lemons on his head. It's striking, if bizarre.

Amid all this shiny stuff, some artists did manage to break into the Salon with pictures characterised by social commentary and innovative technique. Jean-François Millet, for example, in 1863. 

With its evocation of the effort and dignity of the toiler in the field, this was not the sort of picture the bourgeoisie wanted to hang on its walls. 

A year later, Edouard Manet had a large bullfighting picture accepted, but the painting drew severe criticism. Bitterly disappointed, Manet cut the canvas up and reworked the surviving parts, one of which became The Dead Toreador.  

Less than a decade later, as a result of the Franco-Prussian war, Emperor Napoleon III's rule was over, Paris was torn by civil conflict, and Manet created a print with a very similar image of a dead soldier. 

If you couldn't beat the official Salon, you could set up your own, and that was what progressive painters did, opening their exhibition in Paris on April 15, 1874. So in Cologne it's time to see the work of the artists who took part in that show and the subsequent Impressionist exhibitions, including Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and Alfred Sisley. There are the sort of pictures you'd expect -- landscapes, coastal scenes, ballet dancers -- but some surprises too. 

Paul Gauguin, for example, with a luminous Vaugirard Church by Night, an image of a village then on the south-western edge of Paris, and with this combination of an interior, a vibrant still life and a portrait of his daughter Aline, which turns out to be normally at home in Sheffield. 

And there's a really striking Monet seascape, The Green Wave, painted in the mid-1860s, yet still revolutionary enough to be shown in the 4th Impressionist exhibition in 1879. 

It's in the final, central room of this show that you get perhaps the best feel for what the official Salon jury liked, and for what they hated. Complaints had been made to Napoleon III about works that had been rejected, and so in 1863 the Emperor decided to allow the public to judge for themselves, setting up a so-called Salon des refusés in a side room. 

And so here you can see what failed to meet the official standard of acceptable art: Frédéric Bazille's naked Fisherman with a Net, rejected in 1869 (no mythological theme); Gustave-Henri Colin's A Game of Pelota under the Walls of Hondarribia, rejected in 1863 (apparently too bright and colourful, though maybe a bit too Basque as well). 

There was no room either in 1867 for Monet's massive Women in the Garden, more than 2.5 metres tall, an ambitious attempt to create a large-scale group painting out of doors in the open air. We don't get told the story in Cologne, but this is the picture for which Monet had a trench dug in his garden so he could lower the canvas into it to work on the upper section.  

Anyway, you could see the brushstrokes, and of course, there's no narrative. And you can read the verdict of one member of the jury on the Musée d`Orsay website: "Too many young people think of nothing but continuing in this abominable direction. It is high time to protect them and save art!"

And you can certainly see the brushstrokes -- actually, the application of the paint with the palette knife -- in Paul Cezanne's Portrait of Antony Valabrègue, a no-no for the jury in 1866. Valabrègue's hands, at the hands of Cezanne, look like a couple of hams. Talk about flouting convention. 

What a terrific show this is, and there are lots more intriguing pictures, caricatures and anecdotes as you go round; it's entertaining, informative and thought-provoking at the same time. What more can you ask for? 

Practicalities

1863 Paris 1874: Revolution in Art -- From the Salon to Impressionism is on at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne until July 28. The museum is open Tuesdays to Sundays, as well as public-holiday Mondays, from 1000 to 1800, with late openings on the first and third Thursdays of the month until 2200. Full-price tickets cost 13 euros and can be booked online ahead of time here. We spent a good 90 minutes in this show. The museum is a few minutes walk south of Cologne's main railway station and the adjacent cathedral, a sight you really must visit when in the city. 

While you're in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum....

Your remarkably good-value 13-euro ticket gives you access to the museum's expansive and fine collection of paintings from medieval religious art through the Baroque period and into the 19th century. For us, though, it was the modern French work from the Impressionists onward that really caught the eye, with no fewer than seven works on display by Gustave Caillebotte, one of our favourite artists, as well as Signac, van Rysselberghe and more besides. 

Images

Pere Borrell del Caso (1835-1910), Escaping Criticism, 1874, Banco de España Collection, Madrid. © Photo: Banco de España, Madrid
Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry (1828-1886), The Pearl and the Wave (Persian Fable), 1862, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Excursion of the Harem, 1869, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia 
Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), Man with a Hoe, 1860-62, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. © Photo: Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program
Edouard Manet (1832-1883), The Dead Toreador, c. 1864, National Gallery of Art, Washington. © Photo: Widener Collection, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Interior with Aline Gauguin, 1881, Sheffield Museums Trust (on loan from a private collection). © Photo: Sheffield Museums Trust
Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Green Wave, c. 1866/67, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Photo: bpk/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet, Women in the Garden, 1866, Musée d`Orsay, Paris. © Photo: bpk/RMN-Grand Palais/Hervé Lewandowski
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Portrait of Antony Valabrègue, 1866, National Gallery of Art, Washington. © Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington