False Impressionism? The Tate's "Impressionists in London"

False Impressionism? The Tate’s Impressionism in London

The consensus of art critics’ reviews of this exhibition has been pretty damning. Essentially, they say, the Tate is guilty of using the catnip label of “Impressionists” to lure the public to an exhibition of mainly mediocre works by mainly mediocre French artists, among which motley crowd lurk a few works of quality by genuine Impressionists (mainly Monet and Pissarro).

What’s the common theme here? The answer lies in the Exhibition’s subtitle: French Artists in Exile 1970-1904. This is an accurate description of the Exhibition’s offering. Great numbers of French, including artists of all stripes, did go into “exile” in the early 1870s, as a result of war and invasion and vicious civil conflict. This is a historical event of great interest in its own right.

I suggest that the best way to appreciate the Exhibition is as an exploration of, first, the reasons for exile and, second as an interesting social record (sometimes pretty flawed) of the exiled artists’ response to British life and landscapes at the end of the C19.

The fortunes of France and Britain at the time could not have been more different. Here one has two neighbouring European states, both (according to their own estimations) of varying notions of civilisation, arts and literature, political development – and empire. But whereas one basked in bourgeois prosperity and burgeoning global power, the other had suffered military and political catastrophe in a few months.

In 1870, France, then under somewhat tottering imperial rule (Napoleon III, presiding over the Second Empire) had, with hubris, gone to war against Prussia (guided by Bismarck) because of fears that Prussian expansionism threatened the European Balance of Power.

This project backfired spectacularly. The Prussians got their invasion in first and roundly defeated the French armies in a series of battles.

A major episode of the war, precipitating the final French surrender, was the vice-like siege of Paris, reducing the inhabitants to famine conditions in the course of a bitterly cold winter.

That was trauma enough, causing many that could, including artists, to flee. But, on the French surrender, there was a radical political uprising in Paris (a city always to the left of the rest of the country for most of modern times) – the Commune, which sought autonomy for Paris under a more or less revolutionary government.

The shattered French ruling political classes turned the defeated army on Paris. After a few months of heady revolutionary fervour (accompanied by few revolutionary atrocities), the Commune was overcome in a savage “Bloody Week” of street fighting. During the attack, the Communards destroyed many of the great buildings of Paris (the Tuileries, Hotel de Ville).  They were doomed to a rapid defeat and, for many, a rapid death. The army summarily executed any Communard that had taken up arms (and many others that hadn’t). One of the infamous sites of execution was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a wall of which was backdrop to several hundred deaths.

Such were the brutal times from which several thousand fled to England. As the publicity for the Exhibition states, the UK at the time had generous borders – no impediments at all.

The Exhibition rightly starts with the destruction of the Commune and that event’s collateral wreckage.

Certain artists, including Manet, remained in Paris – Manet was reported to have suffered a breakdown from the experience. To the Exhibition Manet contributes a Goyaesque sketch of a firing squad.

There are other sketches and paintings of the ruins of Parisian landmarks. James Tissot, of whom we are to see a lot as the Exhibition goes on,  did a watercolour of a large wall, beneath which lie the bodies of just-shot Communards. Shockingly, another body is depicted in mid-air, having just been flung down from above.

It is sombre, indeed chilling, stuff. Why all this happened is not particularly well explained. It is more of a bald statement: “this is what propelled so many French to England”.

The artists that came were not “refugees” in the sense that has become common in recent times: not penniless, not asylum seekers (given the lack of immigration controls, that term would not have had any content). They mostly seemed to have found comfortable circumstances and many moved straight into circles of fellow artists, dealers and patrons.

The Exhibition highlights (perhaps too strong a word- “gives a lot of space to”) a couple of artists that, one suspects, would not have been accorded their own Tate exhibitions – Tissot and Legros, who happened to be in London at the same time as Monet and Pissarro. Tissot had indeed left Paris after the destruction of the Commune. Legros was an earlier émigré of the 1860s (so strictly does not count as a refugee).

The effect is somewhat discordant. Tissot left behind the horrors of reprisals and, in England, specialised in Society portraits and paintings of social-cum-sporting events, especially those connected with water (regattas..).

Legros was close to the Pre-Raphaelites, and produced many paintings on religious themes that show an exchange of influences with that group.

The pair are strange gallery-fellows to Pissarro and Monet. As I wrote earlier they are best viewed as illustrators of the social and cultural history of late C19 England.

The penultimate room of the Exhibition attempts to redeem its misleading title, by displaying a good number of Monet’s paintings of the Houses of Parliament (done over a number of years).

I reacted badly – the display is overdone by a multitude of the similar, and by unfortunate association with reproductions on tourist tat. But perhaps, as for some reviewers, this room comes too late for studied appreciation.

There are undoubted gems. Pissarro’s fond paintings of SE London scenes, which speak well to viewers today that know his locations (eg Dulwich and Norwood). There are Whistler’s “Blue” studies of Thamescapes – lovely.

Verdict: ignore the art critics’ snobbery. Learn about the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; browse the interesting records of C19 England; love the Pissarros and Whistlers; grovel, if you must, before Monet.

One of Tissot’s most emblematic Society portraits is of a young British cavalry officer, lying languidly on a sofa, in full uniform, cigarette in hand, and with worthy books denoting his non-philistinism scattered nearby.

It suggests arrogance, complacency, a bit of culture and a dashing militarism. Which, in the subject’s case, was to lead in death in battle against an Islamist insurgency in Egypt. Plus ca change…

Jan 2018