The Great Outdoors The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution


The Great Outdoors

Similar Content

Browse content similar to The Great Outdoors. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

# And it hardly looked like a novel at all

0:00:080:00:10

# And the city treats me, it treats me to you

0:00:100:00:13

# And a cup of coffee for you

0:00:130:00:16

# I should learn its language and speak it to you

0:00:160:00:18

# And 70 million should be in the know

0:00:180:00:21

# And 70 million don't go out at all

0:00:210:00:23

# And 70 million wouldn't walk this street

0:00:230:00:26

# And 70 million would run to a hole

0:00:260:00:28

# And 70 million would be wrong wrong wrong

0:00:280:00:31

# And 70 million never see it at all

0:00:310:00:34

# And 70 million haven't tasted snow. #

0:00:340:00:37

If I asked you what the Impressionists were best known for,

0:00:500:00:55

you'd probably say, "For painting outdoors."

0:00:550:00:58

And you'd be right.

0:01:000:01:02

Who doesn't love Monet's delightful fields of poppies,

0:01:020:01:07

with their unmissable smell of the summer?

0:01:070:01:10

Or those dreamy water lilies of his?

0:01:120:01:15

So delicate, so thoughtful.

0:01:150:01:18

Or his sunny moments by the river,

0:01:210:01:24

with their perfectly captured weather?

0:01:240:01:28

It's as if Monet's art

0:01:320:01:36

hasn't got a care in the world.

0:01:360:01:38

Everything in it is relaxed, sleepy...

0:01:390:01:43

..happy.

0:01:450:01:46

Renoir's the same.

0:01:480:01:50

All those gorgeous scenes of dancing...

0:01:500:01:54

..and lunching at Bougival.

0:01:560:01:59

Pretty girls flirting...

0:02:010:02:03

..and jumping on swings with the handsomest chap in the restaurant.

0:02:060:02:10

Pissarro's the same.

0:02:180:02:21

Fields of golden corn,

0:02:210:02:23

sunny orchards,

0:02:230:02:25

happy peasants, merrily at work in the fields.

0:02:250:02:28

Even when he paints the winter, he makes the cold look so welcoming.

0:02:310:02:36

All these famous Impressionist images will be very familiar to you.

0:02:440:02:49

You've seen them before on chocolate boxes

0:02:490:02:51

and the postcards people send you from Paris.

0:02:510:02:54

And even if you don't recognise the actual pictures,

0:02:540:02:58

you'll certainly know their mood.

0:02:580:03:00

That relaxed, optimistic, typical mood of Impressionism.

0:03:000:03:05

So naturally you're going to assume that achieving these pleasing moods was pleasant as well

0:03:110:03:19

and that the life of the Impressionists was relaxing and contented.

0:03:190:03:23

And that's where you'd be wrong.

0:03:290:03:31

Very wrong. Because the outdoor art of the Impressionists,

0:03:310:03:36

their most famous contribution to painting,

0:03:360:03:40

the stuff we all know and love...

0:03:400:03:43

..was a bitch to paint.

0:03:440:03:47

Achieving that pleasant sense of outdoor relaxation...

0:03:470:03:51

..was so much harder than it looks.

0:03:530:03:55

In the last film, we saw the Impressionists come together

0:04:020:04:06

for their first show, in 1874.

0:04:060:04:09

Over the next decade they had seven more exhibitions.

0:04:110:04:15

That's eight shows in all, eight shows that changed art.

0:04:150:04:22

And from the beginning, they wanted to paint outdoors.

0:04:240:04:28

To paint what they could see, what was really there.

0:04:280:04:32

In Monet's case, that usually involved water.

0:04:350:04:40

Monet spent his entire life living next to water.

0:04:420:04:47

It was as if he was born with two umbilical cords,

0:04:470:04:50

one connected to his mother, the other connected to the Seine.

0:04:500:04:55

It started in Paris, where he was born in 1840,

0:05:000:05:05

and where the Seine is all twisty and urban.

0:05:050:05:09

In Le Havre, where he grew up, the river pours itself into the Atlantic

0:05:130:05:19

in a messy industrial puddle full of elusive glimmers and shimmers.

0:05:190:05:25

His final days, of course,

0:05:280:05:31

were spent here at Giverny by his famous lily pond,

0:05:310:05:36

which he created from scratch,

0:05:360:05:37

specifically to paint the water from every angle,

0:05:370:05:42

with every watery nuance.

0:05:420:05:45

So the whole of Monet's life was spent by the water,

0:05:470:05:51

and water was the main obsession of his art as well.

0:05:510:05:55

This was just a bog when he got here.

0:06:080:06:12

All this had to be created.

0:06:120:06:15

But it was worth it because it brought him closer to this stuff.

0:06:150:06:21

The problem with painting water, the difficulty, the challenge,

0:06:210:06:26

is that it's constantly changing.

0:06:260:06:29

Everything affects it.

0:06:290:06:31

Every moment is different.

0:06:310:06:33

Water...

0:06:340:06:35

..is sort of there and sort of not there.

0:06:370:06:40

I mean, how do you paint...

0:06:400:06:43

that?

0:06:430:06:44

Monet's answer was to get right on top of it, as close as he could.

0:06:490:06:54

To live it, breathe it, all day long

0:06:540:06:58

in a special boat he had built for himself, a floating studio,

0:06:580:07:03

custom-made for exploring the river.

0:07:030:07:06

We know exactly what it looked like, because he was painted working on it

0:07:080:07:12

by his fellow boat lover, Edouard Manet.

0:07:120:07:16

Manet himself never became a proper Impressionist,

0:07:160:07:20

but he shared many of Monet's Impressionist ambitions,

0:07:200:07:23

as well as most of the consonants in his name.

0:07:230:07:26

Manet and Monet were always getting confused.

0:07:260:07:31

Manet shows Monet painting the Seine at Argenteuil,

0:07:330:07:36

just up the river from central Paris.

0:07:360:07:40

He's in his special boat, hard at work,

0:07:400:07:44

dressed from head to toe in impeccable white boating gear.

0:07:440:07:49

Not, you'd have thought, the most practical clothes to work in,

0:07:520:07:56

but Monet was a bit of a dandy.

0:07:560:07:59

He had all his shirts hand-made

0:07:590:08:01

and was famous for his frills and his cuffs.

0:08:010:08:04

Besides, on every French river,

0:08:040:08:06

the rowers were obliged to wear a different colour.

0:08:060:08:10

Here on the Seine, they had to wear white.

0:08:100:08:13

There's something of the Hercule Poirot about him, don't you think?

0:08:150:08:19

The neat little dandy dabbing away tidily at his view of the Seine.

0:08:190:08:24

And if you look at the back of the boat, in the cosy home-made cabin,

0:08:270:08:31

you'll find Monet's wife, Camille,

0:08:310:08:34

stored away neatly like a useful sack of provisions.

0:08:340:08:39

Camille would sit placidly at the back of the boat,

0:08:400:08:44

singing for Monet, feeding him, organising his picnics.

0:08:440:08:48

I bet they had other kinds of fun as well

0:08:480:08:51

in that cosy-looking floating love-nest of theirs.

0:08:510:08:55

In his earlier years, when he was still trying to make it the official way, Monet painted Camille

0:09:000:09:07

in a gorgeous green dress and sent his portrait to the Salon,

0:09:070:09:12

where, not surprisingly, it was a big hit.

0:09:120:09:15

It's not a revolutionary image

0:09:180:09:21

or a painting that does anything very new.

0:09:210:09:24

But it does show how talented he was

0:09:240:09:28

and how much he liked clothes.

0:09:280:09:30

So does this other famous portrait of Camille,

0:09:350:09:38

in a blonde wig would you believe, done up as a Japanese geisha.

0:09:380:09:43

Is this really the same sack of provisions at the back of the boat?

0:09:440:09:48

Amazingly, yes, it is.

0:09:500:09:53

Including your lovers in your art like this, painting your family,

0:09:580:10:02

your girlfriends, dressing them up, was new.

0:10:020:10:06

Michelangelo would never have done it, or Turner,

0:10:060:10:09

or any of the posh predecessors of the Impressionists.

0:10:090:10:13

But the Impressionists were trying to be true to life,

0:10:130:10:17

to paint things as they were,

0:10:170:10:19

to make everyday life a suitable subject for art.

0:10:190:10:23

Besides, when they started out, most of them were famously poor.

0:10:230:10:28

They couldn't afford other models.

0:10:280:10:30

Camille cost nothing

0:10:330:10:35

and for Monet, one of the attractions of the river, I suggest,

0:10:350:10:39

one of the chief reasons he kept coming back here

0:10:390:10:43

to watch the paddling and the people,

0:10:430:10:46

is that the river, too, was free.

0:10:460:10:48

TRAIN WHISTLES BLASTS

0:11:030:11:05

Mind you, boating across France

0:11:080:11:10

to reach all the landscapes they wanted to paint

0:11:100:11:14

would have taken the Impressionists many lifetimes,

0:11:140:11:18

and that's where the train comes in.

0:11:180:11:20

The French were actually very slow to take up train travel.

0:11:270:11:32

Water was more their thing.

0:11:320:11:34

They'd just engineered themselves

0:11:340:11:36

the best canal system in the world,

0:11:360:11:39

connecting the Mediterranean to the Atlantic,

0:11:390:11:42

the north of France to the south.

0:11:420:11:44

So when the train came along, all the water authorities

0:11:440:11:50

and everyone who'd put any money into canal building -

0:11:500:11:53

which was an awful lot of people -

0:11:530:11:54

felt almightily threatened

0:11:540:11:57

and wished the train would just go away.

0:11:570:12:01

In fact, until 1842, even building a train line in France was illegal.

0:12:060:12:13

In that year, though, the law was changed.

0:12:130:12:16

And the conquest of rural France by the iron horse could begin in earnest.

0:12:160:12:21

In 1842, there were no miles of national rail track in France.

0:12:240:12:30

By 1892, there were 30,000 miles of it, a crazy expansion

0:12:300:12:36

connecting Paris to its suburbs, the capital to the coast.

0:12:360:12:40

But it's no good just getting to places quickly.

0:12:430:12:47

You also need the right painting gear when you get there.

0:12:470:12:51

All sorts of gadgets were invented to make artistic travel easier.

0:12:550:13:00

The entire painting kit was rethought and miniaturised,

0:13:000:13:05

so it could all be carried around in this handy little box.

0:13:050:13:08

A few clicks of the latch and hey presto,

0:13:080:13:11

one minute you're this.

0:13:110:13:14

The next minute, you're this.

0:13:140:13:16

Now when you see pictures of the Impressionists in their full painting gear,

0:13:190:13:23

you might think they look a bit silly

0:13:230:13:26

and they're just trying to achieve a fashionable, painterly look.

0:13:260:13:30

But actually, all this has a purpose.

0:13:300:13:34

The silly smock is obviously handy

0:13:350:13:38

for carrying your brushes and things,

0:13:380:13:41

but the really important thing about it, is its colour.

0:13:410:13:45

It's deliberately dark, black or blue.

0:13:460:13:49

That's because if you're trying to catch

0:13:490:13:52

subtle nuances in the landscape,

0:13:520:13:54

the last thing you should be wearing is bright coloured clothes,

0:13:540:13:58

which would throw bright coloured reflections.

0:13:580:14:01

If this smock were pink,

0:14:010:14:02

it would throw pink reflections back on to the picture.

0:14:020:14:06

And these big hats they all wore and the twee parasols,

0:14:100:14:14

they weren't there just to keep the midday sun off your head.

0:14:140:14:17

More threatening to the committed Impressionist than sunstroke

0:14:170:14:22

was the damage done to your colour values by direct sunlight.

0:14:220:14:27

It just messed them all up.

0:14:270:14:29

If I paint something bright green in the hot sun

0:14:410:14:44

and then take it home afterwards, it'll look completely dark.

0:14:440:14:50

So the very worst time to paint an Impressionist picture

0:14:500:14:56

is on a hot and sunny afternoon.

0:14:560:14:58

That really is a challenge.

0:14:580:15:00

So the parasols and the wide brimmed hats

0:15:040:15:07

were to ensure that when you took

0:15:070:15:08

your Impressionist masterpiece home at the end of the day,

0:15:080:15:13

you could still see the glorious field of poppies

0:15:130:15:16

you'd spent all afternoon painting...

0:15:160:15:19

..or that sunny, boating view you'd worked on so sweatily

0:15:210:15:25

by the banks of the Seine.

0:15:250:15:27

Painting landscapes outdoors is hard enough,

0:15:350:15:37

but for really problematic outdoor painting

0:15:370:15:42

there's nothing quite as tricky as painting people.

0:15:420:15:46

Unlike landscapes, people need to be persuaded to sit for you.

0:15:490:15:54

They get bored, fidgety.

0:15:540:15:56

One day they turn up, the next day they don't.

0:15:560:16:00

You know what French girls are like!

0:16:000:16:02

Renoir had developed a fiendishly difficult ambition.

0:16:040:16:09

He wanted to capture the mood of modern Paris.

0:16:090:16:14

The bonhomie, the relaxation, the laughs.

0:16:140:16:18

And he wanted to paint it all outdoors, as it was happening.

0:16:180:16:24

To do that, he got himself a studio up here in Montmartre

0:16:240:16:29

at the top of the hill.

0:16:290:16:31

In Montmartre, nobody watched what you were doing,

0:16:310:16:34

so you just did more of it.

0:16:340:16:36

This was where the poor people lived and where the most fun was had.

0:16:400:16:46

Away from the authorities, away from the old rules.

0:16:460:16:51

Renoir's new studio was along here in the Rue Cortot.

0:16:580:17:03

It had a handy garden...

0:17:050:17:08

..in which he persuaded some of Montmartre's

0:17:110:17:14

prettiest girls to pose for him.

0:17:140:17:18

Renoir needed to be at his most dangerously persuasive

0:17:210:17:25

to charm this 16-year-old Montmartre blonde,

0:17:250:17:28

Jeanne Margot, into his garden.

0:17:280:17:32

She was up for it.

0:17:340:17:36

But her mother, a wise old bird, wasn't.

0:17:360:17:40

Perhaps she knew that Renoir was deliberately trying

0:17:410:17:44

to update this risque old master,

0:17:440:17:49

The Swing by Fragonard,

0:17:490:17:52

painted in the naughty days before underwear was invented.

0:17:520:17:57

Renoir was stealing himself for something big,

0:17:590:18:02

a statement, an encapsulation of this new Parisian mood.

0:18:020:18:07

And this big picture was going to be painted outdoors, in situ,

0:18:070:18:13

with all the models around.

0:18:130:18:15

So he ordered himself an extra large canvas

0:18:180:18:21

and every day for the whole of the summer

0:18:210:18:24

he lugged it around Montmartre with a pal.

0:18:240:18:28

Down here.

0:18:300:18:32

Along here.

0:18:320:18:33

Up here.

0:18:350:18:38

And finally over here, to the infamous Moulin de la Galette.

0:18:380:18:44

The Moulin was Renoir's favourite playground.

0:18:460:18:50

It was everyone's favourite playground.

0:18:500:18:53

A bar, a restaurant, a dance floor,

0:18:530:18:56

it really came to life on Sunday afternoons

0:18:560:18:59

at the end of the working week,

0:18:590:19:01

when the flirting and the dancing reached its climax.

0:19:010:19:05

This is a galette, by the way.

0:19:160:19:18

It's a cheap and popular cake they sold in there.

0:19:180:19:21

But people didn't come to the Moulin for the cakes.

0:19:210:19:24

They came for the opportunities, the adventures, the joie de vivre,

0:19:240:19:30

and that's what Renoir set out to paint as well.

0:19:300:19:33

He worked on it for months inside the Moulin, on the dance floor,

0:19:360:19:42

using the Montmartre girls and their friends as models.

0:19:420:19:47

Jeanne Margot's in there somewhere having fun.

0:19:470:19:51

So is her older sister, Estelle, the girl at the front.

0:19:510:19:56

Renoir's Moulin was shown at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877,

0:19:580:20:03

where everybody noticed it.

0:20:030:20:07

It's a fabulous, fabulous picture.

0:20:120:20:14

But to see it only as a record of fun and frolics in Montmartre

0:20:140:20:18

would be a mistake.

0:20:180:20:20

The Moulin de la Galette

0:20:210:20:23

is also a big Impressionist statement, about social change.

0:20:230:20:28

The new heroes of Renoir's art

0:20:310:20:34

aren't priests or emperors or generals,

0:20:340:20:37

though there's probably a few of those in there somewhere,

0:20:370:20:41

everyone came to the Moulin.

0:20:410:20:43

But the real heroes here are the working girls

0:20:430:20:46

and the young chaps with attitude,

0:20:460:20:49

the modern Parisians in whose boisterous grasp

0:20:490:20:54

the future now lay.

0:20:540:20:56

Something else revolutionary about the Bal

0:21:020:21:04

at the Moulin de la Galette is the way it's painted.

0:21:040:21:07

It's often true of Impressionist art.

0:21:070:21:09

The closer you get, the more revolutionary it seems.

0:21:090:21:12

All Renoir's art, all Monet's art, and Pissarro's,

0:21:150:21:18

is a tribute to the crucial contribution

0:21:180:21:22

to art history made by this fine animal here.

0:21:220:21:27

This excellent brush in waiting.

0:21:270:21:30

Porky, the pig.

0:21:300:21:32

Brushes were the key to Impressionism.

0:21:340:21:37

Without the latest brushes applying the latest colours

0:21:370:21:40

in the latest ways, Impressionism couldn't have happened.

0:21:400:21:44

Traditionally brushes were made out of this little chappie here.

0:21:460:21:50

Out of different members of the weasel family.

0:21:500:21:54

Various types of weasel hair were used, the most precious of which

0:21:560:22:00

came from the kolinsky sable, which lived in Siberia,

0:22:000:22:04

and to protect itself from the cold

0:22:040:22:07

the kolinsky had developed this special fur

0:22:070:22:10

that trapped the air bubbles.

0:22:100:22:12

And when it was used in artists' brushes, it kept the paint very well

0:22:120:22:16

and released it slowly, so artists who wanted to use glossy surfaces,

0:22:160:22:21

shiny surfaces, they used the sable.

0:22:210:22:26

In the 19th century, however, a crucial switchover occurred.

0:22:270:22:32

In techniques, ambitions and animals.

0:22:320:22:36

Instead of smooth, silky, sable hair,

0:22:360:22:39

landscape artists began to use the hair from little piggy here.

0:22:390:22:45

Hog's hair was stiffer,

0:22:450:22:47

thicker and in the wrong hands, clumsier and messier.

0:22:470:22:51

But in the right hands, the hands of the Impressionists,

0:22:510:22:55

hog's hair made your brushes sing.

0:22:550:22:59

Hog's hair brushes didn't glide around the canvas,

0:23:000:23:04

they dug and scraped across it

0:23:040:23:07

in exciting furrows of paint and colour.

0:23:070:23:11

A new language is being invented and its ambition isn't to fool you

0:23:110:23:15

or pretend something is there that isn't,

0:23:150:23:20

its ambition is to speak to you, through paint.

0:23:200:23:24

And excite you.

0:23:240:23:26

So that's the superb contribution to progressive art

0:23:310:23:35

made by this fine creature here,

0:23:350:23:37

the best friend the Impressionists ever had.

0:23:370:23:40

The River Seine is 776 kilometres long.

0:23:490:23:54

It flows all away from the Swiss Alps to the English Channel,

0:23:540:23:58

but as far as art is concerned

0:23:580:24:00

it only really gets interesting when it gets to Paris.

0:24:000:24:05

In Paris the Seine grows complex and devious,

0:24:070:24:12

twisting back on itself, toying with the geography.

0:24:120:24:17

By the time it comes out the other side,

0:24:170:24:20

it's become such a fascinating river.

0:24:200:24:22

Apparently the word Seine

0:24:390:24:41

comes from the ancient Celtic and actually means "sacred river".

0:24:410:24:46

The Impressionists certainly worshipped it.

0:24:460:24:49

They kept painting it and repainting it,

0:24:490:24:52

until they'd made it the most painted river ever, anywhere.

0:24:520:24:56

They saw it in all weathers.

0:25:010:25:03

In summer and in winter.

0:25:030:25:05

In mysterious mists and terrifying floods.

0:25:050:25:09

And the Seine was much too useful as a watery motorway

0:25:170:25:21

from Paris to the sea

0:25:210:25:23

to remain pretty for 776 kilometres.

0:25:230:25:29

Sometimes the new satanic mills cluttering its banks

0:25:290:25:34

coughed horrible things into the air

0:25:340:25:37

and filled the sky with darkness.

0:25:370:25:40

But most of the time it was delightful.

0:25:440:25:47

All these happy Parisians

0:25:470:25:49

enjoying their new leisure time in new outdoor ways.

0:25:490:25:53

Boating, sailing, having fun.

0:25:530:25:56

And one thing you can rely on in the story of Impressionism,

0:25:570:26:01

is where there's fun, there's Renoir.

0:26:010:26:03

In the old days in France, Sundays were for going to church,

0:26:180:26:22

for communing with your creator and feeling guilty.

0:26:220:26:25

But in these new secular Sundays that Renoir paints,

0:26:250:26:29

the weekends are for fun.

0:26:290:26:33

And Sundays are now for relaxing and looking beautiful,

0:26:350:26:41

for parading in your finery,

0:26:410:26:43

for flirting, lunching and above all, for dancing.

0:26:430:26:49

Apparently Renoir was a fiend on the dance floor,

0:26:510:26:55

a really good mover, marvellous dancer,

0:26:550:26:57

and his love of polkas and waltzes is unmissable

0:26:570:27:01

in his favourite paintings of mine, Renoir's dance pictures.

0:27:010:27:06

Come on, how can anyone resist

0:27:070:27:10

these twirling evocations of couples having fun?

0:27:100:27:14

Renoir's joie de vivre is surely contagious.

0:27:140:27:20

The most ambitious of Renoir's dancing pictures,

0:27:260:27:30

The Dance at Bougival, features Suzanne Valadon,

0:27:300:27:35

an outrageously gorgeous Montmartre model,

0:27:350:27:39

who turned many a fine artistic mind to jelly.

0:27:390:27:46

Valadon pops up here and there in Renoir's art,

0:27:470:27:51

sometimes with her clothes on.

0:27:510:27:54

Often without them.

0:27:550:27:57

She's the modern girl as the new Venus,

0:27:570:28:00

elbowing out the imaginary goddesses of the Greeks

0:28:000:28:04

and elbowing in the living,

0:28:040:28:07

breathing girls of Montmartre.

0:28:070:28:11

Even Renoir, who was hardly a prober of people's character...

0:28:150:28:19

..found something deep to notice in Suzanne Valadon.

0:28:210:28:25

He painted her dancing, here, at Bougival.

0:28:260:28:30

Renoir saw something far away in Valadon's eyes,

0:28:320:28:37

a doubt, a dream, a regret.

0:28:370:28:40

As characterisation, it's not in the Rembrandt league,

0:28:410:28:46

but it is deeper than we usually expect of Renoir.

0:28:460:28:50

These sensuous pleasure pictures of Renoir's

0:28:540:28:57

painted on location outdoors

0:28:570:28:59

are deliberately blowing raspberries at the Old Masters.

0:28:590:29:03

Their message is that the modern world

0:29:040:29:06

and the things modern people do are a fitting subject for great art.

0:29:060:29:12

Today, we tend to look down on Renoir's party paintings

0:29:130:29:18

and accuse them of superficiality.

0:29:180:29:21

As Renoir himself once complained,

0:29:220:29:25

people don't take you seriously if you smile.

0:29:250:29:29

Bravo.

0:29:310:29:32

SCATTERED APPLAUSE

0:29:320:29:34

The world was opening up.

0:29:410:29:42

Places that had been so difficult to get to were now easy.

0:29:440:29:49

This place, Etretat, in Normandy, was just a train ride from Paris.

0:29:510:29:57

The difficulties here started after you arrived.

0:29:590:30:03

Monet knew Etretat from his youth.

0:30:040:30:07

He grew up in Le Havre, just up the coast from here,

0:30:070:30:10

and he was, of course, a beach bum by instinct.

0:30:100:30:13

When Monet returned here a full-grown Impressionist,

0:30:150:30:19

he'd stay in a hotel just back from the beach.

0:30:190:30:22

Sometimes he was content to paint the view from the hotel window.

0:30:230:30:28

But most times he wasn't.

0:30:280:30:31

Painting in Etretat was anything but simple.

0:30:330:30:37

In fact, it was damned difficult.

0:30:370:30:39

Monet would have to lug his gear

0:30:410:30:45

across all these treacherous boulders to get to the best rocks.

0:30:450:30:51

And then he'd have to clamber up there

0:30:530:30:56

to that spooky tunnel you can see...

0:30:560:30:59

..to his favourite beach on the other side.

0:31:010:31:04

These days, it's even tougher to get down there.

0:31:090:31:13

The sea's completely cut it off.

0:31:130:31:16

If he was in the money, he'd get some of the local kids to carry his gear for him,

0:31:220:31:28

so you have to imagine a procession of small children, overburdened

0:31:280:31:32

with canvases, easels, parasols,

0:31:320:31:37

slithering across the rocks to get to Monet's secret beach.

0:31:370:31:41

One day, he was so engrossed in painting the sea

0:31:450:31:48

that he lost track of time and forgot the tide.

0:31:480:31:53

As the tide rushed in, he was trapped out here on the rocks.

0:31:550:31:59

His paints scattered, his pants ripped,

0:31:590:32:02

his new canvases floating out into the Atlantic.

0:32:020:32:06

He made it back, but only just.

0:32:060:32:11

These are some of the few original fishing boats left in Normandy.

0:32:210:32:26

Exactly like the ones Monet painted

0:32:260:32:29

and went out on when he was feeling particularly reckless.

0:32:290:32:33

The tide is high, so you can go all the way to those big rocks out there

0:32:390:32:42

and float right underneath them,

0:32:420:32:44

but you have to be pretty brave to do that and a bit stupid!

0:32:440:32:48

Another of the great Impressionists we'll be looking at in this film,

0:32:560:33:00

Cezanne, made a famous quip once about Monet.

0:33:000:33:04

"Monet," said Cezanne, "was just an eye.

0:33:040:33:09

"But what an eye."

0:33:090:33:11

Cezanne was trying to say that Monet was really good at looking,

0:33:130:33:17

which he was.

0:33:170:33:18

Monet watched the sea more intensely than anyone else, but you don't come

0:33:180:33:24

all the way out here and float under that thing if all you are is an eye.

0:33:240:33:29

To do this, you need to have a big heart as well.

0:33:290:33:33

And a mighty set of cojones.

0:33:330:33:37

Dry land, though, isn't always a relaxing alternative -

0:34:050:34:09

not when nature decides to make it tough for you.

0:34:090:34:14

The Impressionists were very partial to snow.

0:34:150:34:19

They all painted it.

0:34:190:34:21

Monet, Renoir, Pissarro.

0:34:210:34:24

The snow picture became an Impressionist speciality.

0:34:240:34:28

Part of the attraction of course was the beauty of snow scenes.

0:34:320:34:36

Snow brings crispness and drama wherever it falls.

0:34:360:34:42

But there were also scientific issues to consider,

0:34:470:34:50

as there usually are with the Impressionists,

0:34:500:34:53

because the one thing you get more of in the snow

0:34:530:34:56

than in any other natural conditions,

0:34:560:34:59

is coloured shadows.

0:34:590:35:02

Look deeper into any Impressionist's snow scene

0:35:050:35:09

and you'll usually find some brave experimentation going on,

0:35:090:35:12

with vivid blues and livid purples.

0:35:120:35:17

Scornful reviewers looking at these bright purple shadows

0:35:260:35:31

would sometimes burst out laughing

0:35:310:35:34

and accuse the Impressionists of hallucinating,

0:35:340:35:37

but of course they weren't.

0:35:370:35:41

They were just painting what they saw,

0:35:410:35:44

because snow shadows are never black.

0:35:440:35:47

They're always full of colour, and I'm going to show you why.

0:35:470:35:53

First, I have to build myself a projection screen.

0:35:550:35:59

Somewhere to show you the natural magic we're dealing with here.

0:35:590:36:05

The Impressionists did it on their canvases.

0:36:050:36:09

I'm going to do it...

0:36:090:36:11

..on this.

0:36:120:36:13

So that's my projection screen.

0:36:160:36:20

Now, these two torches are basically artificial versions

0:36:200:36:25

of the natural light you get around here in the winter.

0:36:250:36:28

This is the sun shining down from the sky.

0:36:280:36:32

This one here, that's all the ambient light that you get

0:36:320:36:36

reflected up off the snow.

0:36:360:36:38

That's why the snow is so good for showing this,

0:36:380:36:41

because there's so much ambient light reflected off it.

0:36:410:36:45

So sunlight, snow light, but to show you how these two come together

0:36:470:36:55

to create coloured shadows, I need to switch off all the other lights.

0:36:550:37:01

That's better.

0:37:030:37:06

Now, these are two typical Impressionist figures,

0:37:060:37:10

a man and a woman, bourgeois types of the kind you see strolling around

0:37:100:37:16

so much Impressionist art.

0:37:160:37:20

And I've also got

0:37:210:37:23

this coloured cellophane.

0:37:230:37:25

So think of this yellow cellophane

0:37:290:37:33

as an artificial version

0:37:330:37:36

of a sunny day.

0:37:360:37:39

Imagine the sun up in the sky shining lots of yellow light down,

0:37:390:37:44

and if I throw this yellow light

0:37:440:37:48

at the Impressionist couple,

0:37:480:37:52

and also this other light,

0:37:520:37:55

representing the ambient light reflected from the snow, you'll see

0:37:550:38:01

that the Impressionist couple

0:38:010:38:04

are now casting purple shadows.

0:38:040:38:08

However, if I change the colours and make this a red light -

0:38:110:38:14

imagine a red sky with the sun shining at sunset,

0:38:140:38:19

and shine that at the Impressionist figures,

0:38:190:38:23

then you'll see that the colours of the shadows

0:38:230:38:27

change as well, and become greenish.

0:38:270:38:31

It's basic optical science.

0:38:320:38:35

Light is made up of all the colours of the spectrum,

0:38:350:38:38

so if you block off some of these colours,

0:38:380:38:40

the receptors in your eyes begin to see new things.

0:38:400:38:45

Interestingly, though, the Impressionist era

0:38:480:38:51

wasn't just an important era for scientific experiment,

0:38:510:38:56

it was also an important era for shadow puppets.

0:38:560:39:00

Puppet shows were an immensely popular entertainment

0:39:000:39:04

in the bars and cabarets of Montmartre,

0:39:040:39:07

and huge crowds would flock to see the best ones.

0:39:070:39:11

And any nosy Impressionist in the audience

0:39:110:39:14

couldn't have failed to notice the intriguing colour issues

0:39:140:39:19

that were being raised by these puppet shows.

0:39:190:39:24

If we jump ahead in this series to the Seurat story that's coming up,

0:39:270:39:33

we'll see coloured shadows and the magic of the puppet show combined

0:39:330:39:37

so adventurously and brilliantly.

0:39:370:39:41

Bonjour, Madame.

0:39:420:39:44

Bonjour, Monsieur!

0:39:440:39:45

Vous etes tres belle!

0:39:450:39:48

Oooooh!

0:39:480:39:51

The Impressionist who was most fascinated by coloured shadows

0:39:560:40:00

was Camille Pissarro,

0:40:000:40:02

who loved Christmas scenes and winter frosts.

0:40:020:40:07

He found plenty of both here in Pontoise, where he moved in 1872.

0:40:070:40:13

Pissarro didn't just look like Father Christmas,

0:40:150:40:19

he behaved like him as well.

0:40:190:40:21

One of his best qualities was his generosity.

0:40:210:40:25

Most French artists of the time had egos the size of the Eiffel Tower

0:40:320:40:37

and thought only of "moi, moi, moi".

0:40:370:40:40

But not Pissarro.

0:40:400:40:43

If you keep watching this series,

0:40:430:40:45

you'll see him helping Gauguin become an Impressionist,

0:40:450:40:49

and then promoting Seurat, the genius of the dots.

0:40:490:40:53

He even made sure poor old Van Gogh had somewhere peaceful to die,

0:40:540:41:00

by bringing him here, to Auvers, just up the river from Pontoise.

0:41:000:41:06

Back at the beginning of our story,

0:41:180:41:20

in the early days of Impressionism, Pissarro even took in an interest

0:41:200:41:26

in an artist that no-one else would touch with a barge pole.

0:41:260:41:30

A particularly stubborn and selfish and downright weird painter

0:41:300:41:37

called Cezanne.

0:41:370:41:39

Cezanne's early work,

0:41:450:41:47

the pictures he showed in the first Impressionist exhibition,

0:41:470:41:50

are still challenging today.

0:41:500:41:54

So imagine what people thought when they saw these things in 1874.

0:41:540:41:59

A peculiar self-portrait,

0:42:020:42:05

with a bearded Cezanne leching over a shivering nude

0:42:050:42:09

in a half-mad brothel scene.

0:42:090:42:12

A portrait of Cezanne's father painted with a palette knife,

0:42:130:42:18

and looking as if it's been carved out of tar.

0:42:180:42:21

Never before has anyone produced art

0:42:230:42:25

as deliberately dark and crude and tough

0:42:250:42:29

as these strange pictures.

0:42:290:42:32

Cezanne called these early works "couillarde",

0:42:370:42:42

which is not a word you find in most French dictionaries.

0:42:420:42:47

It seems to mean something like "ballsy".

0:42:470:42:50

An art made...down there.

0:42:500:42:54

Rapes, mutilations,

0:42:560:42:58

big, hunking nudes.

0:42:580:43:02

The art pouring out of Cezanne when he fell in with the Impressionists

0:43:020:43:07

was so black and strange.

0:43:070:43:10

It was Pissarro who changed all that.

0:43:200:43:24

He invited Cezanne to Pontoise

0:43:240:43:27

and persuaded him to stop the darkness -

0:43:270:43:31

to get out of himself more, out of his black head,

0:43:310:43:35

and to start painting outdoors,

0:43:350:43:39

before the motif.

0:43:390:43:41

Somewhere just about here.

0:43:410:43:43

It was like throwing a switch.

0:43:470:43:49

One moment, Cezanne is the creator of this.

0:43:490:43:53

The next, he's gone all sensitive and rural,

0:43:550:43:59

and he's painting this.

0:43:590:44:01

When Cezanne became a landscape painter,

0:44:030:44:06

his darkness seemed suddenly to evaporate into sunny shimmers.

0:44:060:44:11

Cezanne showed in three Impressionist exhibitions

0:44:240:44:27

and then fell out with Pissarro, which was typical.

0:44:270:44:32

Cezanne fell out with everyone.

0:44:320:44:35

Returning home to Provence,

0:44:360:44:39

he cut himself off from the Paris art world

0:44:390:44:42

and devoted himself to painting the landscape he knew best.

0:44:420:44:47

This is the Cezanne family house, the Jas de Bouffan.

0:44:490:44:53

It appears in lots of paintings and hasn't really changed that much.

0:44:530:44:57

Cezanne's father was a rich banker.

0:45:020:45:05

The family home was big and bourgeois.

0:45:060:45:10

Cezanne enjoyed painting this posh pond here.

0:45:120:45:16

And when he finished with the grounds,

0:45:170:45:20

he started on the workforce.

0:45:200:45:22

In real life, everyone at the Jas de Bouffant

0:45:240:45:27

was constantly bickering and arguing.

0:45:270:45:30

But in the eternal game of cards

0:45:310:45:34

that Cezanne turns into one of his greatest subjects,

0:45:340:45:38

time stops still and peace takes over.

0:45:380:45:42

BIRDSONG

0:45:470:45:48

This is the studio Cezanne built for himself just outside Aix,

0:45:550:45:59

so he could paint out here in the countryside with no distractions.

0:45:590:46:03

It's been kept more or less as he left it.

0:46:050:46:07

Inside here, Cezanne produced some of the most revolutionary pictures

0:46:140:46:19

in the story of art,

0:46:190:46:20

using only the simplest ingredients.

0:46:200:46:24

All he needed was a bag of apples and a new way of looking.

0:46:250:46:30

The middle of the 19th century was THE great era of optical discovery.

0:46:350:46:40

All sorts of remarkable things were found out about vision.

0:46:400:46:44

What actually happens to the eyes when we see something?

0:46:440:46:47

What does looking actually involve?

0:46:470:46:52

It was an Englishman, Charles Wheatstone,

0:46:530:46:56

who first described stereo vision in 1838.

0:46:560:47:00

Until then, no-one had bothered to ask themselves

0:47:020:47:05

why human beings have two eyes.

0:47:050:47:08

Why don't we just have one big eye right here in the middle?

0:47:100:47:15

Wouldn't that be more practical?

0:47:150:47:18

More visually economical?

0:47:180:47:20

No, actually.

0:47:200:47:22

Because the reason we have two eyes is that with two eyes,

0:47:220:47:25

we can see in stereo and judge distances more exactly.

0:47:250:47:31

That's why people who lose an eye

0:47:310:47:33

have difficulty in the beginning driving.

0:47:330:47:36

They can't judge distances as well.

0:47:360:47:38

This had huge artistic implications.

0:47:380:47:42

Particularly for Cezanne.

0:47:420:47:44

If you stare hard at these apples I bought in the shop down the road,

0:47:480:47:52

you'll notice that each eye sees them differently.

0:47:520:47:57

The left eye sees them from over here.

0:47:570:48:01

The right eye from over here.

0:48:010:48:03

If I now combine these two views through the magic of television,

0:48:040:48:09

I'll get a crude Cezanne-ish blurring.

0:48:090:48:12

An optical tipsiness that's so Cezanne.

0:48:120:48:16

Cos what Cezanne realised was that traditional, single-point perspective,

0:48:190:48:24

where everything is arranged in a line in front of you, was wrong.

0:48:240:48:28

What we actually do is see in stereo, through two eyes,

0:48:280:48:33

each of which sees things from slightly different angles.

0:48:330:48:38

The brain then combines these two images into a single view.

0:48:400:48:45

It's a momentous discovery.

0:48:470:48:49

Traditional perspective was under attack.

0:48:500:48:54

Outside Cezanne's studio, just up here, a short climb away,

0:48:590:49:04

he painted one of his famous views of the Mont Sainte-Victoire

0:49:040:49:09

and explored another fascinating optical phenomenon,

0:49:090:49:14

discovered by the under-rated Charles Wheatstone,

0:49:140:49:18

who invented this contraption here -

0:49:180:49:21

the pseudoscope.

0:49:210:49:23

What this thing does is swap around all your optical information

0:49:260:49:31

so what you usually see in your left eye is moved to the right eye

0:49:310:49:37

and vice-versa.

0:49:370:49:39

As a result of swapping your eyes around,

0:49:410:49:43

concave shapes become convex and convex shapes become concave.

0:49:430:49:50

Everything is reversed.

0:49:500:49:52

Unfortunately, it's totally impossible for me to show you that.

0:49:570:50:01

There is no way I can feed separate information to both your eyes.

0:50:010:50:05

So what you have to imagine is that with one of these,

0:50:070:50:10

the human face becomes a mask,

0:50:100:50:13

which you see like that.

0:50:130:50:16

Backgrounds and foregrounds swap places.

0:50:200:50:24

The entire relationship of far to near is challenged.

0:50:240:50:30

A Cezanne also challenges it in his superb tussles

0:50:300:50:34

with the mountain that obsessed him.

0:50:340:50:37

The Mont Sainte-Victoire.

0:50:370:50:40

So did he actually use one of these?

0:50:440:50:46

I don't think so. He wasn't a man for gadgets.

0:50:460:50:49

But he'll definitely have known about it.

0:50:490:50:52

Optical discovery was in the air

0:50:520:50:54

and everything the Impressionists did was informed by it.

0:50:540:50:57

And if you stare at this landscape as intensely,

0:50:570:51:01

as relentlessly as Cezanne did sooner or later,

0:51:010:51:06

it'll start to shimmer and coalesce.

0:51:060:51:09

Until it reveals its deeper truth.

0:51:120:51:15

This is the Pont de l'Europe.

0:51:340:51:36

Ugly as sin, I think you'll agree.

0:51:360:51:38

But this was one of the most inspirational

0:51:390:51:43

art locations in Paris.

0:51:430:51:45

Great Impressionist things were done around here.

0:51:450:51:48

Manet, the grandfather of Impressionism,

0:52:000:52:04

had a studio up here on the Rue Saint-Petersbourg.

0:52:040:52:07

At number four, up on the first floor.

0:52:080:52:11

Notice the window up there.

0:52:130:52:15

That pops up again in the smoky background

0:52:160:52:19

of a very curious Manet painting

0:52:190:52:22

set on the Pont de l'Europe.

0:52:220:52:24

It shows a Parisian nanny with a little girl,

0:52:240:52:27

who looks out across the railway tracks

0:52:270:52:31

like a prisoner staring through the bars of a cage.

0:52:310:52:34

Remember, when Manet was living here,

0:52:340:52:38

all this was brand new.

0:52:380:52:40

The entire area had just been dug up and laid out

0:52:400:52:44

by the infamous Baron Haussmann, rebuilder of Paris.

0:52:440:52:48

And the Gare Saint-Lazare down there,

0:52:490:52:51

at which the little girl in the picture is staring,

0:52:510:52:53

that was the first railway station in Paris.

0:52:530:52:57

And to emphasise the city's new connectivity

0:52:590:53:02

to the rest of the world,

0:53:020:53:04

Haussmann had given all the boulevards

0:53:040:53:07

radiating from the Pont de l'Europe

0:53:070:53:09

the names of European capitals.

0:53:090:53:12

London.

0:53:150:53:17

Madrid.

0:53:180:53:20

Constantinople.

0:53:210:53:23

Edinburgh.

0:53:240:53:26

Yes, Edinburgh.

0:53:270:53:29

Rome!

0:53:310:53:32

Saint Petersburg.

0:53:350:53:36

All these roads that lead out of Paris.

0:53:360:53:39

That's what the little prisoner in Manet's painting

0:53:390:53:42

is dreaming of as well.

0:53:420:53:44

The new freedom that she can't get to.

0:53:440:53:48

And neither can her nanny,

0:53:510:53:53

trapped sadly on the wrong side of the tracks.

0:53:530:53:56

Who says Impressionism never had a message?

0:53:580:54:01

But the busiest Impressionist around here was Monet.

0:54:060:54:09

He was less interested in the Pont de l'Europe

0:54:090:54:12

and more interested in what was going on down there -

0:54:120:54:16

in that smoky hell of the Gare Saint-Lazare.

0:54:160:54:19

The Impressionists were frequent visitors to the Gare Saint-Lazare.

0:54:220:54:26

It was from here that trains left the city for the suburbs

0:54:270:54:30

and brought all those sunny views of the Seine within easy reach.

0:54:300:54:35

But in 1877, Monet had a Eureka moment.

0:54:370:54:41

Instead of painting the sunshine and the river banks,

0:54:430:54:46

why not paint the station itself?

0:54:460:54:49

The fog, the steam, the apocalyptic belching?

0:54:490:54:53

Now that would be modern.

0:54:550:54:57

Renoir told him he was mad.

0:54:580:55:01

Besides, he'd never get in.

0:55:010:55:03

Then, as now, you don't just waltz

0:55:050:55:08

into a mainline station and paint it.

0:55:080:55:11

There were rules to be followed. Forms to be filled in.

0:55:110:55:15

Jobsworths to be dealt with.

0:55:150:55:17

It should have taken months to organise.

0:55:210:55:23

Monet fixed it in a day.

0:55:230:55:26

Putting on his poshest clothes,

0:55:260:55:28

he demanded to see the director of the station

0:55:280:55:31

because he was Monet, the great painter.

0:55:310:55:35

The director had never heard of him before, of course.

0:55:360:55:40

His thing was trains, not art.

0:55:400:55:43

But this posh chap turns up

0:55:430:55:45

and tells him he wants to close down the station,

0:55:450:55:48

to delay the train to Rouen and to fill the space with extra smoke.

0:55:480:55:54

The director is just about to tell him no

0:55:540:55:57

when Monet piped up,

0:55:570:55:59

"I went to see the director of the Gare du Nord the other day

0:55:590:56:03

"and he was very welcoming.

0:56:030:56:05

"Do you know, I can't quite decide

0:56:050:56:07

"whether to do this at the Gare du Nord or here.

0:56:070:56:11

"What do you think, Monsieur le directeur?"

0:56:110:56:14

The next day, he was in.

0:56:140:56:17

It was actually very dangerous to fill the station

0:56:190:56:22

with all the smoke from all the engines of all the delayed trains.

0:56:220:56:27

But that was the effect Monet was after.

0:56:280:56:31

He'd set out to paint the foggiest sight he could imagine.

0:56:310:56:35

A vision that out-Turnered Turner.

0:56:350:56:38

A train shed full of smoke.

0:56:390:56:42

A dozen quickly painted canvases record his battle.

0:56:440:56:48

They were unveiled at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877

0:56:490:56:53

and are among his most dramatic achievements.

0:56:530:56:57

Man giving nature a good run for her money

0:56:570:57:01

in the production of clouds and fogs

0:57:010:57:04

and apocalyptic thunder.

0:57:040:57:06

Monet could have died painting his station pictures.

0:57:090:57:13

choking on carbon monoxide and smoke.

0:57:130:57:16

But he was an Impressionist

0:57:160:57:18

and Impressionists don't take shortcuts.

0:57:180:57:22

These guys were determined, hardcore, and did whatever it took.

0:57:250:57:30

Why they tramped through fields of the coldest cold,

0:57:360:57:40

just to capture the colour of shadows.

0:57:400:57:45

They trekked up mountains.

0:57:520:57:54

Wherever nature impressed them,

0:58:000:58:03

the Impressionists went after it and tried to capture it.

0:58:030:58:07

Fogs.

0:58:150:58:17

Floods.

0:58:220:58:24

Rain storms.

0:58:300:58:32

And treacherous coastal black spots.

0:58:360:58:38

They were after the truth and went where it took them.

0:58:440:58:49

And that's never been an easy journey.

0:58:490:58:51

Mind you, not all the exploring the Impressionists did

0:58:550:58:59

was done outdoors.

0:58:590:59:00

Sometimes the most interesting sights

0:59:020:59:04

are right there under your nose.

0:59:040:59:06

As we'll find out in the next film

0:59:070:59:10

when we investigate the Impressionists indoors.

0:59:100:59:13

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:59:330:59:35

E-mail [email protected]

0:59:350:59:38

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS