Manet and the French impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne--Guillaumin . design in painting this picture than to place these differentcharacters in it because they pleased him and he wished to pre-serve a record of them. When one endeavours to form some definite idea of Manetduring these preliminary years, one envisages a man with aninstinctive impulse to strike out a path for himself, and a deter-mination to escape from the dominating aesthetic code whichenvironed him, and from the rigid precepts that were followedin the studios. He is seeking to give
Manet and the French impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne--Guillaumin . design in painting this picture than to place these differentcharacters in it because they pleased him and he wished to pre-serve a record of them. When one endeavours to form some definite idea of Manetduring these preliminary years, one envisages a man with aninstinctive impulse to strike out a path for himself, and a deter-mination to escape from the dominating aesthetic code whichenvironed him, and from the rigid precepts that were followedin the studios. He is seeking to give his personality free play;then, with mind awake and eyes opened, he looks out upon thevarious aspects of the life round about him, and produces studiesprolifically. His travels lead him to those of the old mastersfor whom he feels an affinity,—Franz Hals in Holland, theVenetians in Itaty. He studies Velasquez and Goya at firstfrom those of their pictures which are to be found in his first works are coloured by a variety of reflections andinfluences. Some, which he did in his early youth when in. EARLY WORKS 17 Coutures studio, or immediately after leaving it, show a ten-dency towards Franz Hals; others reveal either the influenceof the Venetians, or a kind of kinship with the Spanish traits which he borrows, however, are distinctly superficial;they do not take such deep root in his work as to give a reallydissimilar character to his various pictures. On the contrary, inviewing them chronologically, a well-marked individuality is visiblein the very first, and recurs in all the others, undergoing a con-tinual course of development. Above all, one feels oneself in the presence of a man whomnature has gifted in the true sense of the word. The instinctwhich impelled Manet to be a painter had not deceived yielding to it he had only obeyed the mysterious voice ofNature, which, as it creates certain men to accomplish certaintasks, gives them also the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectpainting, bookyear191
