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Ten Most Controversial Impressionist Paintings

January 3, 2013 Brian Art CommentariesNo comments

Why did the Impressionist art movement cause so much controversy? What was it about the Artists and their Art that caused this controversy?

Every new kind of art has always caused controversy. The public are uncomfortable with anything new. The Art Establishment and Artists are often threatened by it. Impressionism was new and thus it was controversial. The disregard for detail, bold brush marks, bright colours, coloured shadows, and the attempt to catch fleeting moments in time, were all new concepts in Art. The impressionist artists also caused controversy by rebelling against the controlling Art Establishment. Almost everything about impressionism was controversial and even today their Art still causes controversy, by the prices that their works are fetching at auctions.

First a few comments that were made of the impressionist’s and their works

The impression produced by the Impressionists is that of a cat walking on the keys of a piano, or a monkey that has got hold of a box of paints.
A critic, Albert Wolfe, described an impressionist exhibition as having been put together by five or six lunatics, one of them a woman, a group of unfortunate creatures seized with the mania of ambition.
The same critic later noted that some people burst out laughing in front of these things – my heart was crushed by them.
Another critic Louis Leroy wrote of impressionism “Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”

The Ten Most Controversial Impressionist Paintings.

The Luncheon on the Grass – Edouard Manet

The Luncheon on the Grass – Edouard Manet

This painting is perceived as the most controversial Impressionist painting of all. Manet shocked the French public with this painting “Luncheon on the Grass”. A nude woman casually having lunch with two fully dressed dandies. The woman’s body is starkly lit and she stares provocatively at the viewer. This was an affront to the propriety of the French bourgeois, and was accentuated by the familiarity of the figures. Manet’s wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, and model, Victorine Meurent, both posed for the nude woman, which has Meurent’s face, but Leenhoff’s plumper body. The two men are Manet’s brother Gustave Manet and his future brother-in-law, Ferdinand Leenhoff.
Olympia – Edouard Manet

Olympia – Edouard Manet

This painting is perceived as the second most controversial Impressionist painting. “Shocking” was the word used to describe this masterpiece when it was first unveiled in Paris in 1865. Why was there so much controversy surrounding what is perhaps the most famous nude of the nineteenth-century? The objections to Olympia had more to do with the realism and contrasts of the subject matter than the fact that the model was nude. Manet based Olympia’s composition on “The Venus of Urbino”, one of the famous masterpieces by the Italian painter Titian. A very pale reclining nude woman stares again provocatively at the viewer, who is being attended to by a very black maid and a black cat. One can almost believe she is amused by the controversy she knows that she is about to cause. The public were so outraged by this painting that the gallery was forced to hire two policemen to protect the canvas?
The Absinthe Drinker – Edgar Degas

The Absinthe Drinker – Edgar Degas Blog Small wikipaintings.org

The Absinthe Drinker was shown in the third Impressionists exhibition in Paris in 1877 the painting was deemed ugly and disgusting and was thus put away for five years. It was shown again in Paris 1892 and received the same kind of response. Why would somebody want to paint the ugly dark side of the Paris Cafés? One year later when shown in England in 1893, it again sparked controversy about the degeneration of the Paris bourgeois and the danger that the Absinthe drink posed to society. The Irish novelist George Moore upon first seeing the painting stated “What a Whore”. George Moore did later apologize for the comment. The painting was originally bought by Brighton-based collector Henry Hill.
The drink Absinthe was given the affectionate name “the green fairy” but was also referred to by the less affectionate name “a ticket to the madhouse”. One of the main ingredients of the Absinthe drink, Thuzone was an oil extract from the wormwood plant and was believed to have psychoactive qualities and was also highly addictive. Absinthe was later banned throughout most of Europe and the USA. More…
Impression Sunrise – Claude Oscar Monet

Impression Sunrise – Claude Monet

This controversial Impressionist painting is the painting that started it all! Monet originally named this painting Impression but Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s brother Edouard needed a proper title for the Impressionism Exhibition Catalogue. Edouard added an explanatory ‘Sunrise’ to the name. Thus started the story of this amazing group of painters. Impression Sunrise was to lend its name to the whole art movement due to an article by critic Louis Leroy, for Le Charivari that unmercifully ridiculed it. Leroy meant to discredit the Impressionists works, instead, he gave them their name.
A further controversy surrounding the painting Impression Sunrise was that Ernest Hoschede, a wealthy department store owner, purchased it for 800 francs, shortly after the first Impressionist Exhibition closed. Nineteen years later Claude Monet would marry Alice the wife of Ernest Hoschede in a modest ceremony in Giverny, after the death of her first husband.
Study Torso Sunlight Effect – Pierre Auguste Renoir

Study Torso Sunlight Effect – Pierre August Renoir

This controversial Impressionist painting of a semi nude woman with sunlight filtering through the trees was first displayed in the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876. Study Torso Sunlight Effect was the consummation of Renoir’s studies of light playing on the human body in the open air. Renoir chose to emphasize the effects of light on the female torso instead of the specific characteristics of the model Anna Leboeuf.
This painting is a forthright denial of local colour in favour of a wide range of reflected light effects and as such was particularly badly received by the critics. The sunlight, filtering through the trees, produced a mottled effect on the womans torso and clothing.
Albert Wolfe, a consistently vicious critic of the Impressionists, upon seeing this mottled effect, wrote a comment for the popular Le Figaro on April 3, 1976: “Try to explain to M. Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a heap of decomposing flesh covered with green and purple patches, which are the sign of advanced putrefaction in a corpse.“
The Artists Studio – Frederic Bazille

The Artists Studio – Fredrick Bazille

Frederic Bazille is probably the least known of the Impressionist artists, but could have been the greatest. Bazille was born the same year as Renoir in 1841 but was the only member of the impressionist group that saw front line duties in the Franco-Prussian War. Bazille was extremely tall and was probably not a good candidate for the front lines of a war. Unfortunately he was killed in action in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. What makes this painting controversial beyond his short life span was that when Bazille declared the painting finished, to his friends who were all in the painting, Edouard Manet declared that it was not finished. Manet then grabbed Bazille’s palette, paint and brushes and proceeded to paint Bazille into the painting. Bazille is the tall individual in the center to the right of the easel.
The Lane of Poplars at Moret – Alfred Sisley

Lane of Poplars at Moret – Alfred Sisley

This controversial Impressionist painting gets its’ controversy in that it is arguably irresistible to thieves, as its August, 2007 removal from the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice marks the third time it has been stolen within thirty years.
First in 1978 when on loan in Marseille (recovered a few days later in the city’s sewers). Next in 1998 (in which the museum’s curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years along with two accomplices) and for a third time in August 2007. It was later recovered on June 4, 2008, by the French National Police along with three other stolen paintings from inside a van in Marseilles, France.
The Card Players – Paul Cézanne

The Card Players – Paul Cézanne Blog Small

This controversial Impressionist painting currently holds the record as the most expensive painting ever sold. Cézanne painted five versions of the Card Players. Three of the five versions have the same two men sitting across from each other playing cards with the same table and bottle of wine. This version of The Card Players is the one that recently sold for two hundred and forty-nine million dollars. That is well over one hundred million dollars more than the previous highest sale of a painting. Two men playing cards and a bottle of wine on a small table, for two hundred and forty-nine million dollars? Is any painting worth that much? More…
Dr. Paul Gachet – Vincent Van Gogh

Dr.Paul Gachet – Vincent Van Gogh

Dr. Gachet was the Doctor that was taking care of Van Gogh at the time when Van Gogh committed suicide. This painting suggests many interesting things about Van Gogh’s state of health and mind.
A letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo stated that Vincent Van Gogh believed that Dr. Gachet was sicker than himself. This painting clearly supports Van Gogh’s letter. It portrays in Dr. Gachet’s posture and face with depression, sadness and melancholy.
A Second Controversial topic to the painting was the significance of the branch from the foxglove plant. The Foxglove plant was used to produce a heart medicine called Digitalis that may have been used on Van Gogh to control his seizures. Van Gogh showed some of the side effects of Digitalis poisoning in the halos around bright objects (Starry Night, Starry Night over the Rhône and Cafe Terrace at Night) and a tendency of seeing yellow more dominantly. But these paintings were all painted while Van Gogh was at St. Remy asylum before he was in the care of Dr. Gachet.
The Red Vineyard – Vincent Van Gogh

Red Vineyards at Arles – Vincent Van Gogh

This was the only painting by Van Gogh that sold during his life. The Red Vineyard painting was displayed and sold in 1890, a mere six months prior to his death, in Brussels to Anna Boch for 400 Francs. Anna a painter herself was the sister of the Eugène Boch, another impressionist painter and friend of Van Gogh.

The sale of the Red Vineyard painting may have played a part in the suicide of Vincent Van Gogh, as his brother Theo wanted to send the money from the sale to him. But Theo’s health and future at Valadon & Cie was in question. There is a belief that Vincent, in seeing that his paintings were starting to be recognised, decided to committed suicide to increase the value of his paintings so his brother Theo, wife and child would receive all funds from the sale of his paintings.