In 1870/71 and years immediately following, French artists
arrived in London to escape the horrors of violence and destruction in their
own country. This was the result of the Prussian siege of Paris and the defeat of
the French army. The humiliating surrender terms helped prompt the radical
insurrection of the Paris Commune, which in turn led to its brutal suppression,
culminating in “la semaine sanglante” and the wholesale slaughter of the
Communards by French government forces. Artists were faced with a depressing
situation and its adverse effects on their earnings. Others were more directly affected:
the Prussian army turned Pissarro’s family home into stables, and the same army
ransacked Sisley’s house.
This Tate Britain exhibition not only presents
Impressionists, but also work by other non-Impressionist artists. There is,
considering the title of the exhibition, a little too much of what at times
seems like padding. Nevertheless it provides an interesting and wider context
of exile, showing that refugee artists needed support networks. Ones evolved
that were the French helping each other, an example being those who had
attended the “Petite Ècole”. Legros, who had settled successfully in London
earlier, in 1863, was the focal point for this French artists’ version of the
“old school tie”.
In 1870, Paul Durand-Ruel, who has his own historic role as
the most important art dealer for Impressionism, moved to London and opened a
gallery in New Bond Street. While Daubigny (one of Durand-Ruel’s artists) was
painting by the Thames, he encountered another, younger French artist also
painting there: it was Monet, twenty-nine years old and evading military
conscription. In an early room of the exhibition is a crucial moment of a
painting by each artist depicting a Thames-side scene. It was in London, and
through this meeting, that Durand-Ruel took Monet onto his roster, its self
massively significant. Monet’s stay, though, was not a happy one: he had work
rejected by the Royal Academy and failed to sell a single painting. The
portrait of his wife, Camille, ‘Meditation, Mrs Monet Sitting on a Sofa’ (1870)
embodies the dislocation of exile. This is in sharp contrast to Tissot, who
effortlessly stepped from one success in Paris to another in London. His network
was essentially wealthy English supporters and collectors, and he ended up
buying a smart house in St John’s Wood, staying on until 1882. Not an
Impressionist at all, his figures now look as if they were Photoshopped onto
their backgrounds: “Monsieur Tissot, did you time travel and discover the
Magnetic Lasso Tool?”
It is in the final rooms that the exhibition comes alive
with some wonderful Impressionist paintings. Pissarro and Sisley in particular,
who enjoyed, as outsiders, some of England’s sporting quirkiness (regattas and
cricket) and the expansive parks not present in Paris, seem at ease and the
work blossoms, literally with Pissarro’s gorgeous ‘Kew Gardens, Rhododendron
Dell’ (painted on one of his returns to London in the 1890s). In other paintings, Pissarro achieved soft,
subtle effects: shimmering light and colours from a combination of Pointillism
and Impressionist brush strokes. There are two paintings by Pissarro of cricket
matches, of which he became something of a devotee, later playing it with his
children in France.
And what of Monet? He returned to London, successful and
wealthy, in 1899, 1900 and 1901: each time staying at the Savoy. Some of the
Thames Series he produced during these visits make a superb and triumphant
penultimate room. There is also his stunning depiction of Leicester Square,
jolting us into a twentieth century Modernist aesthetic.
The final room is presented as a coda, with Derain, at the
encouragement of his dealer, paying homage to Monet’s Thames Series with
full-on Fauvism. Was this necessary? It would have been better, I think, to end
with Monet.
Tate Britain’s exhibition demonstrates, in a way writ large,
the positive benefits from providing a place of safety for refugees, and helps
us to acknowledge that it remains a privilege being the country to which these
brilliant and innovative artists came.
About the
reviewer
Robert Richardson is a visual artist and
writer. His work is included in Artists’ Postcards: A Compendium (edited by Jeremy Cooper, published by
Reaktion Books, London). In
2014, his solo exhibition TextSpaces was
exhibited at Eugen Gomringer’s Kunsthaus Rehau in Germany. One of his designs will be
included in a book about Leeds Postcards, to be published in 2018 by Four
Corners Books. He is a member of the
Biennale Austria association of contemporary artists.www.bobzlenz.com
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