Impressionism: Friend or Foe?

Impression: Sunrise

What are we to make of impressionism? According to Chesterton it was “another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe”. These are damning words, which will not be accepted very readily by those who admire impressionist art. One does not look at a painting by Monet, Manet or Renoir and think immediately of radical relativism in any of its obvious forms, whether it be the reductionism of Schopenhauer or the iconoclastic moral nihilism of Nietzsche. On the contrary, French impressionism has become utterly bourgeois, almost twee. It is the sort of art one expects to see on a chocolate box or adorning the most inoffensive of calendars. It is too safe and acceptable to be seen as revolutionary.

Chesterton has a point, however, in the sense that impressionist art is defined (paradoxically) by its lack of definition. It represents the antithesis of realism, not merely in terms of figurative depiction but also in terms of philosophy. Reality, for the impressionist, is not the precisely definite but the vaguely apprehended impression that the observer has of it. Impressionist art is the expression of this impression. It is, therefore, in some sense, the dimly discerned rejection of the metaphysical realism of the scholastic and also a rejection of the empiricism of the Enlightenment. It can be seen, therefore, as the progenitor, at least in terms of aesthetics, of postmodernism and deconstructionism.

Yes indeed. Chesterton has a point.

How should such an understanding impact our attitude to impressionist art? Should we shun it as ultimately inimical to the quest for goodness, truth and beauty?

Insofar as it is beautiful, it should be admired because, insofar as it is beautiful, it is true. How can one not bask in the splendour of Monet’s depiction of Rouen Cathedral in full sunlight without giving thanks and praise for the beauty of the cathedral and for the light of the sun with which the cathedral is bathed, and for the beauty itself which leaves such an impression on us? Doesn’t the reflection of the rising sun in the waters of the harbour in Impression: Sunrise call us to contemplative reflection on the beauty of the reflection itself? Far from shunning impressionist art we should be sunning ourselves in its reflective brilliance.

The Fighting Téméraire

Having ascertained that, in spite of Chesterton’s misgivings, we should admire impressionism, we should allow ourselves to explore its beginnings. In doing so, we will realize that impressionism was not initially a French phenomenon but originated across the Channel in England. Long before the advent of French Impressionism in the 1870s, J.M.W. Turner was pioneering impressionist technique. As early as 1805, he was painting landscapes along the River Thames, west of London, which foreshadow the much later work of Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir and Cézanne. In his late work, he became almost obsessed with light itself, spurning definition. In his greatest work, which dates from this late period, the viewer needs to scan the canvas carefully to discern the subject being depicted. In The Fighting Temeraire, the ship is almost ghostlike and is eclipsed by the smaller vessel which tugs her to her final berth. It’s as though the subject is not really the subject at all but a sideshow which highlights the sun struggling to emerge from clouds. Incidentally, and as an aside, it’s an interesting aesthetic exercise to read “Old Ironsides”, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., which is on the same theme of an old battleship being brought to dock for the final time. The painting and the poem both date from the 1830s, which accentuates the sense that one is a commentary upon the other.

Rain, Steam and Speed

One of the last paintings that Turner brought to fruition is Rain, Steam and Speed which ostensibly depicts a steam train speeding across a bridge. The focus is not so much on the train, however, as on the impression of speed seen through a mist of rain and steam. It’s about movement, light and power rather than any physical object, prophesying not merely the later work of the French Impressionists but the subsequent dissolution and decay of impressionism into the formlessness of abstract expressionism. Such a development seems to vindicate Chesterton’s view of impressionism, yet such a view does not negate the beauty as well as the power of Turner’s late masterpiece.

Turner’s famous last words are said to have been that “the sun is God”, though some have suggested that he actually said “the Son is God”. It is possible that he said neither and that the dying words ascribed to him are apocryphal. In any event, it seems appropriate that he should have died with words of praise to the sun on his lips. He had idolized its light, seeing it more clearly than his contemporaries and resurrecting its presence on his canvases. Ultimately and paradoxically the light by which he saw seems to have blinded him to other and greater lights. This being so, we will conclude with the opening lines of Roy Campbell’s sonnet “To the Sun” as a means of regaining a clear and definite view of reality beyond the realm of mere impression:

Oh let your shining orb grow dim,

Of Christ the mirror and the shield,

That I may gaze through you to Him,

See half the miracle revealed.

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The featured and top image is Impression: Sunrise (1872) by Claude Monet; the other images are The Fighting Téméraire (1839) by J.M.W. Turner; and Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) by J.M.W. Turner. These images are all in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.