The Impressionist Eye

Near the end of the 1800s, a few artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro, were ready to depart from the customary, traditional confines of painting. These men are known as the founders of the art movement called “Impressionism”. The artists abandoned the highly detailed art of the day, and began creating "rougher" pieces, aimed to portray the beauty of the moment rather than the intricacy of people.The Impressionism movement provided a new lens by which artists explored the world–a lens that decreased the influence of their own eye within their works and allowed more space for the viewer’s eye to discern the optical impressions of beauty. Monet achieved this new optical vantage point by striving to capture a specific, fleeting moment of time in his piece “The Cliff at Étretat, Sunset”, training his focus on the passing light and movement at the expense of form and details.

Though Monet is viewed as one of the fathers of this art style, a few artists came before him who also explored this rougher style of painting. In the life of Monet, a notable forerunner was Eugene Boudin. Boudin produced a painting entitled “Personnages sur la plage de Trouville” in 1865, about a decade before the formal dawn of Impressionism. During this time, Monet was creating caricatures like the one pictured below.


Graphite caricature of Henri Cassinelli by Monet

It is recorded that Boudin told Monet, “Come on, Claude — your caricatures are fun, but it's not real art, ...I mean art; I mean painting, Claude, painting!” (Stamberg). Boudin recognized the potential Monet possessed, and he pushed him to fully explore that potential. It was because of Boudin that Monet traveled to the Normandy coast and began to paint in an Impressionistic manner.


“The Cliff at Étretat, Sunset” by Monet

Once Monet fully embraced the Impressionist style, he quickly amassed a large volume of works. One of his favorite places to work was off the Normandy coast in the little village of Étretat. It is estimated that Monet produced 22 works there. One of his works, “The Cliff at Étretat, Sunset”, is shown above. Monet depicts the scene with quick, irregular strokes, as if he were trying to catch a momentary picture that the light of the setting sun produced. Writer M. Southgate describes the features saying, “...the orange sun, the hint of mauve in the evening sky, the carefully placed blues and greens of the water, the solidly built cliff with its graceful and distinctive arch carved from thousands of years, the wind-swept sky hinting at the morrow while reflecting the day just ending”(Southgate). These features took form through certain techniques, such as loose paint handling, various types of brushstrokes, and a color-rich palette, as well as painting wet-on-wet. Painting wet-on-wet proved necessary if the painter wished to complete the piece in one sitting. There are five key components that Impressionist painters strove to include in their pieces: to excel in depicting momentary scenes of beauty, to complete the entirety of their piece in the open air, to use only pure colors, to use small, rough brushstrokes, and to employ the strong power of light to finalize their piece.

A unique discovery was made concerning “The Cliff at Étretat, Sunset” in 2012. A group of astrophysicists journeyed to France in hopes of establishing the exact time of the painting. The low setting sun made this painting unique and served as a useful tool in their analysis. After finding Monet's exact vantage point and digitally recreating the sky from the 1880s, the team was able to conclude that the painting was completed on February 5, 1883 at 4:53 pm. Monet excelled in portraying a sense of time and place.

Much like his painting pictured above, Monet strayed away from including any strong religious or cultural influences within his works. His focus centered around capturing the purity of the natural elements. Because of his works and those of fellow Impressionist painters, society’s view on art began to change. Their unwillingness to conform to traditional styles blazed a new trail that allowed artists to express themselves creatively in original, unadulterated simplicity. Poet Jules Laforgue stated, "The Impressionist eye...is the most advanced eye in human evolution, that which up to now has seized upon and rendered the most complicated nuances known" (Impressionism). Impressionism pieces appear simplistic, yet they convey far more than what initially meets the eye.

The irony surrounding the “Impressionistic Eye” lies in the late year of Monet’s life. Trouble began for Monet in 1908, when his view of distant objects became fuzzy. From there, his condition only worsened, and in 1912, a doctor diagnosed him with bilateral nuclear cataracts. Too afraid to undergo surgery, Monet suffered through the following years. His unique eye, so long acclaimed as one that provided a new perspective of the world, was now failing him. In 1918, 10 years after his vision problems began, he is quoted saying, "I no longer perceived colors with the same intensity, I no longer painted light with the same accuracy. Reds appeared muddy to me, pinks insipid, and the lower tones escaped me. As for forms, they always appeared clear” (Steele). By the year 1922, Monet’s sight had progressed to near blindness. He finally agreed to undergo surgery by the hand of Paris ophthalmologist Charles Coutela. The following years brought Monet complications, along with aphakic glasses he had to wear to see. It took him a while to adjust, but through it all, Monet kept painting. His death came in 1926 after almost 60 years spent painting. The famous remark of fellow painter Paul Cezanne describes Monet and his work beautifully, "He was only an eye, but what an eye!" (Impressionism).


“Le Chateau Noir” by Cezanne in comparison to “Banks of the Seine, Vetheuil” by Monet

The 19th century Impressionist movement provided a new lens through which artists viewed the world. Artists like Monet sought to challenge old conventions and shifts art's focus away from detailed paintings such as still-lifes to a style more focused on capturing the essence of light and fleeting moments in time. This often leads the artist's eye to neglect many details in paintings, yet they still convey powerful aspects in their art: light, movement, texture, time, transiency. This quote says it in a succinct manner: "In [Impressionism’s] purest form it painted solely what the eye saw." The loss of details lets the viewers use their eyes to complete the picture–it gives the paintings multiple meaning. This new viewpoint has since shaped the direction of modern art.



Works Cited

Hurwitz, Laurie S. "The Well-Planned Spontaneity of Claude Monet." American Artist           03 1996:56. ProQuest. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

“Impressionism: Origins, Influences.” Encyclopedia Of Art History. visual-arts-                    cork.com, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

Steele, Matthew, and J. Patrick O'Leary. "Monet's Cataract Surgery." The American              Surgeon 67.2 (2001): 196-8. ProQuest. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

Southgate, M. “The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset.” The Journal of the American Medical                Association 288.19 (2002): 2370. Print.

Walton, Kimberley. “Contrasting the Work of Cézanne and Monet: Two Unique Paths             To Modernism.” Empty Easel. Empty Easel, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2016