Tag Archives: Camille Pissarro

The Boulevard des Italiens {The Story of Art}

Boulevard des Italiens. Camille Pissarro. 1897.

“The people who first visited the Impressionist exhibition obviously poked their noses into the pictures and saw nothing but a confusion of casual brushstrokes…  It took some time before the public learned that to appreciate an Impressionist painting one has to step back a few yards, and enjoy the miracle of seeing these puzzling patches suddenly fall into place and come to life before our eyes. To achieve this miracle, and to transfer the actual visual experience of the painter to the beholder, was the true aim of Impressionists.

“The feeling of a new freedom and new power which these artists had must have been truly exhilarating; it must have compensated them for much of the derision and hostility they encountered. Suddenly the whole world offered fit subjects to the painter’s brush. Wherever he discovered a beautiful combination of tones, an interesting configuration of colors and forms, a satisfying and gay patch of sunlight and colored shades, he could set down his easel and try to transfer his impression on to the canvas… The artist was responsible to no one but his own sensibilities for what he painted and how he painted it. Looking back at this struggle it is perhaps less surprising that these views of young artists encountered resistance than that they were so soon to be taken for granted. For bitter as was the fight and as hard as it was for the artists concerned, the triumph of Impressionism was complete… The struggle of the Impressionists became the treasured legend of all innovators in art, who could always point to the conspicuous failure of the public to recognize novel methods. In a sense this notorious failure was as important in the history of art as was the ultimate victory of the Impressionist program.”

Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 25: Permanent Revolution,” The Story of Art, 15th edition