Musée Marmottan

Yesterday, our class spent the morning at the Musée Marmottan, a private home converted to present a variety of paintings. As we walked through, I took notes about what each painting seemed to indicate about its style of painting, and wrap up with general thoughts about Impressionism.

One of the first paintings I saw was Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie (Paris Street, Rainy Weather). After a very rainy first few days in Paris, it struck me that I think I have seen this particular street corner in the past few days. So many buildings in downtown Paris clearly date back decades that it will be a shock to return to a city that had barely been founded the last time Paris was renovated. I'm off to investigate more of that archaic feel this afternoon, and it's hard to believe I get three more weeks here to look around.

Au Bord du Lac (On the Lakeside), Bethe Morrisot 1883

Paysage de Tours (Countryside of Tours), Berthe Morrisot 1892

The two paintings above showed me one of the more interesting features of Impressionist artists - their ability to use few brushstrokes to give a clear impression of form and substance. In the first painting, Au Bord du Lac, my focus is not on the foreground figures, but on the swan and the horse in the background. The horse is composed of perhaps six brushstrokes, and the swan of no more than twenty, and yet the viewer sees clearly what species each animal is, where it is in relation to the foreground, and what it is doing. At a distance of five feet, it is obvious that each of these animals is no more than a collection of brushstrokes, but from a distance they blend with their surroundings to become something more.

The same is true of Paysage de Tours. Look carefully at the people in the foreground, or the Roman statue in the background and each one is just a collection of a few lines in a neutral background, but from a distance they become something more complex.

Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Rising Sun), Claude Monet  1873

When I found this painting, I tried an experiment - I wondered if I could tell, just by looking at the painting, whether the sun were rising or setting. In the five minutes I stood there, I realized that this was not as simple as I had hoped, and that I had to think about the painting from a different direction. If I thought about the painting as though the title described a setting sun, I got a different impression of the painting - the boats in the foreground were moving in a different direction, or the painter's perspective on the port changed. This is the fun part about impressionism - the painting doesn't strictly define itself to the point that it cannot be interpreted. Whatever the subject, it is the viewer's choice what to see and where it appears.

To close, impressionist paintings strike me more like the description of a location as described in prose than like the Mona Lisa. They suggest a general outline of what can be seen without telling the viewer exactly what is there, so the viewer's imagination fills in the remaining gaps. When I look at the paintings above, it is easy to imagine wind blowing through the trees or rippling the water, and these automatic additions make the painting more than a two-dimensional rectangle on a wall. Instead, it becomes a sort of moving picture with a different character than any precisely painted portrait could have.