Claude Monet - Grainstack Series

Claude Monet, Haystacks at Chailliy at Sunrise, 1865
(San Diego Museum of Art)

Monet revisited the subject of his earlier painting, Haystacks at Chailliy from 1865 when he began working on his Grainstack series.

Claude Monet, Grainstack, Sun in the Midst, 1891
(Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

He was living back at Giverny in 1890 and was going out everyday to paint in the fields that surrounded his house.  This was a very familiar landscape, right outside his door.  The Grainstacks were 20 x 18' high man-made structures that were used to store wheat. It sometimes took a whole year to break them down, which was a great convenience for Monet.  He painted 25 canvases of the same motif with very little variations - some are one and some are two grainstacks - except for the light, weather and atmospheric effects.  He would set up a couple of easels next to one another and work on several canvases at the same time.

Claude Monet, Grainstack Snow Effect, 1891
(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Claude Monet, Grainstacks at Sunset, Snow Effect, 1890
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Claude Monet, Grainstacks in the Sunlight Midday

Claude Monet, Two Grainstacks at The End of The Day, Autumn
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Grainstacks were monumental subjects on the landscape symbolizing fertility and prosperity; they were directly associated with the French countryside.  Monet was rendering the light and air surrounding the object, its distinctive light and atmosphere, this, he referred to as 'enveloppe.'  The subject became secondary to the colors and effects.  He was trying to capture air and light with paint.  It is relatively easy to decipher what he is trying to accomplish in the Grainstacks at Sunset, Snow Effect - the same blue used in the surroundings is picked up in the Grainstack, breaking down the barrier between the figure and ground. Monet captured the haziness that surrounded the figure. In these paintings, Monet's love of the French countryside, deep admiration for nature and his distinctive individualism all come through in eloquent simplicity. 1


1  Paul Tucker, Monet and the Challenges to Impressionism in the 1880s

Hokusai, 36 Views of Mount Fuji, 1826-1833                              

ukiyo-e Japanese Woodcut Prints Monet was aware of these prints and he owned a couple of them.  He was probably influenced by the idea of taking one subject and going over and over it with variations.  

                                         

Claude Monet - Gare St. Lazare

Claude Monet, Self-portrait, 1886

For Monet, the 1880's were a time of contemplation, doubts and a search for new avenues for his art.  He wanted to broaden his horizons, be able to reach new markets outside of Paris, find new avenues for the representation of nature caught in the transient moment and indulge his wanderlust.  There was also the issue of Georges Seurat and his followers who were trying to change the direction of the avante-garde art movement.  Monet was a well-known artist who had made a reputation for himself and wanted to go on pursuing new goals and taking Impressionism to the next level. This self-portrait with the furrowed brows and askance expression Monet painted around this time, seems to visualize his self-questioning.




Monet had to reassert Impressionism as the leading avant-garde style and reinforce his position as the leader of the modernist movement.  In order to do this, he set himself with very taxing goals and traveled in search of new places to paint and capture the light illuminated off these new landscapes.  His search led him to concentrate on specific sites and the differing conditions of  atmosphere.  At this time he started to paint the same landscape from different aspects that the critics started to call his series paintings.  But preceding his series paintings, Monet had already been thinking of making multiple paintings of the same subject when he had painted The Gare St Lazare ensemble in 1877.   These 12 painting were done over time and not meant to be exhibited together.  He had rented an apartment nearby and was given permission to paint by the train tracks.  He would start his paintings on site and then finish them in his studio.  Although these were focused extensively on one motif, they were differing perspectives some showing the trains under the shed, some showing the building behind the shed and in some smoke covering and rendering the shed invisible.  Some could even be classified as an interior space while others had the outside and inside feeling at the same time.

Claude Monet, The Gare St-Lazare, 1877
(National Gallery, London)

Claude Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare:  Arrival of a Train, 1877
(Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Claude Monet, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877
(Musee d'Orsay)

Claude Monet, Le Pont de l'Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877
(Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet, Paris)

                                                  http://smarthistory.org/france-1848.html

From studying a site in detail and painting it from different points of view, Monet would go on to paint the same exact site from the same exact point of view making the subject secondary to the effects of atmosphere in his Grainstack Series.

Impressionist's Response to Seurat's Pointillism

Georges Seurat began his career as an impressionist concerned with the effects of light but later went on to reform it and approach Impressionism in a whole new perspective, as a result of which being referred to as a Neo-Impressionist.  He incorporated scientific theories into his art and surpassed the momentariness of his contemporaries and built canvases that would recall the treasures of the past from the art of the  Egyptians to the friezes of the Parthenon.  Some people loved his work while a lot of the Impressionists despised it.  His stilted, frozen figures were severely criticized by Monet who went on to paint a series of paintings as a response to Seurat to get beyond Impressionism.

Camille Pissaro, Apple Picking, 1886
(Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan)

Pissaro, on the other hand embraced Seurat's Pointillism and announced that Impressionism had become rancid, too romantic, stale, old and dried up.  He incorporated Seurat's technique into classical Pissaro subject matter in Apple Picking from 1886.

Camille Pissaro, The Boulevard Montmarte on  a Winter Morning, 1897
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

But by 1897, after working in this manner for a couple of years, he was back to the Impressionistic style because he realized Seurat's style was too static.  Pissaro thought that it was not possible to capture the momentariness, the colors or the effects of Impressionism with Pointillism.

Monet and Renoir were especially upset with Seurat's work.  Claude Monet who had not done much of figure painting since his earlier days, suddenly did monumental figures in landscapes.  He found Seurat's figures too static so he painted figures full of dynamism with everything in motion as a response to A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  He achieved this by color, using oranges, yellows and blues, plus with his vigorous brush work.  The clouds are moving, the grass is swaying, the figure's dress and scarf is fluttering in the wind.

Claude Monet, Study of a Figure Outside:  Woman with a Parasol Turned to the Left and Turned to the Right, 1886

                 These paintings are Monet's critique of Seurat's figures in A Sunday at Le Grand Jatte.

Around this time Monet had decided to broaden his and Impressionism's horizons outside of just Paris and its environs.  He traveled out to different regions of France and painted numerous canvases on subjects of his interest - weather and light effects, clouds, crashing waves - the drama of nature. As he traveled throughout the country to Etrerat, Grand-Camp, Belle Ille, and Antibes, and documented the French countryside, Monet's desire to proclaim his and Impressionism's association with the French nation as a whole, came into realization.

During his travels Monet revisited destinations that were main tourist attractions and also were painted by Georges Seurat in his pointillist technique, and reworked these subjects in pure Impressionist style.

Claude Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882

(Art Institute of Chicago)

Georges Seurat, La Bec du Hoc, Grancamp, 1885

(Tate Gallery, London)

While in Monet's Cliff Walk at Pourville, even the grass is moving and there is no clear edge, in Seurat's Le Bec du Hoc, the edges are clearly defined and the birds in the air, the only living thing on the canvas look still.

Claude Monet, Rocks at Belle Isle, 1886
(Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

When Monet was painting these rocks in a spot that is a little bit father down the coast from where Seurat made his painting in Grancamp,  Monet must have been thinking of him.  The deep blue and violet tones of the water shows the dynamism of the sea and how dangerous the coast is. Monet uses the same tones he uses in the water, in the rock formations along with yellow and orange to emphasize the light effects. Interestingly enough, Seurat also uses yellow and oranges for his light effects but without any of Monet's dynamism.


Monet talked about the difficulties he was having during his stay in Belle Isle, in his letters to Alice Hoschede and his friends.   The canvases he produced in Belle Isle had no trace of humanity, only earth, sky and sea.  He wrote about the crashing waves and the mist and how difficult it was to paint in these conditions, creating the myth of Monet as the artist who was deeply and personally involved with nature.  Although, Monet actually would finish his paintings in his studio.  By concentrating on the weather and light conditions, in specific sites, Monet proved the lengths he could go to in Impressionism and the exacting depiction of natural phenomenon.
His Belle Ille paintings were the first of his series paintings where he used a standard format for all the canvases and concentrated on a limited motif, and exhibited several together as a group.  These were the predecessor of his famous Grain Stacks series.

Georges Seurat - Le Cirque

Georges Seurat, Le Cirque, 1890
(Musee d'Orsay)

This was Georges Seurat's last painting that he exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1891 in its unfinished state. He died a couple of days after hanging the painting.  This painting contains all the elements Seurat was interested in and experimenting with,  but we don't know how much further or in which direction he might have gone from here since he died so young, leaving behind his own version of optical blending of color called pointillism.

Jules Cheret, Hippodrome de la PorteMaillot,
Paris Courses, 1890

Le Cirque is a very good example of how Seurat incorporated popular imagery and interpreted the condition of modern society into his work.  He could have looked to one of  Jules Cheret's posters advertising the Paris Courses at the Hippodrome de la Porte Maillot, or a Ball at the Moulin Rouge,  for this  particular painting; some of the figures and colors are almost exact replicas.  Seurat was known to have admired how Gustave Courbet used popular culture as a source for fine art.  This was a time when posters were starting to be used for the advertisement of popular entertainments and Cheret's posters would have been all over Paris.  What Seurat accomplished by breaking down barriers was cause for criticizim for bringing in too much popular culture to his work.

Theatrical subject matters like the circus were also a favorite with Degas, who also might have had an influence on Seurat's selection of this particular motif.

This painting with all its upward moving diagonals and warm colors, all of which would have suggested a happy and uplifting experience, in actuality could have been a critique of spectatorship.  The audience seems to be unresponsive to the spectacle that was taking place in front of their eyes.  This was a time when people of all classes were looking to find entertainments in a city like Paris that in itself had become a spectacle as T. J. Clark called it in his book, The Painting of Modern Life. 
Seurat applied Henry Chevreul's theory of the balancing contrasting colors to create harmony by painting a blue frame to the predominantly yellow color of  this picture.

Observing how Seurat has flattened the picture plane even more than his previous works and the different  points of perspective offered within the painting and the juxtaposition of the different concerns throughout the history of art being incorporated in his own unique vision makes me wonder what was next if he had lived a longer life.

Georges Seurat - Le Chahut

Georges Seurat, Le Chahut, 1889-1890

(Kroller-Mueller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands)

Charles Henry, a French biologist and philosopher wrote a book Introduction to a Scientific Aesthetics that theorized psychological and physiological implications of color and line.  According Henry's theory, lines moving in an upward direction were suggestive of happiness, while lines moving downwards suggested sadness and warm color moving from blue-green to red (including green, yellow and orange) were pleasing and uplifting while cool colors moving from red to blue-green (including blue, purple) resulted in feelings of sadness.

Georges Seurat was familiar with Henry's theories and believed that art was harmony which was an analogy of contrary and similar elements of tone, color and line. When considered in this light, Le Chahut, can be regarded as a painting about the psychological effects of color and line.  The canvas is made up of  predominantly warm colors, orangy reds and some yellow(that changed in the years after it was painted.)  All the lines in the painting are moving upwards causing an uplifting mood. Except for the one linear line  in the left side of the canvas everything is at diagonals. The girls' and men's legs, their facial features, men's mustaches even the ribbons on their shoes and shoulders seems to be have taken flight upwards. The Base player in the front of the picture plane  with his back turned, connects the painting with its frame, he forms a huge triangle that grounds the composition.  There is also an orchestra chef and an audience that goes around the stage who are following the show.  The viewer is behind the orchestra, similar to some of Degas' ballet paintings.  The other prominent figure in the painting is the man with a pug-nose who is sitting on the right side of the painting. His features recall a satyr's, making the viewer aware of the an underlying seedy, sexualized behavior taking place. As a matter of fact, it does look like he is looking up the skirts of the dancer in front of him. Satyr's were supposed to have an insatiable appetite for sex.

This is the scene of a tacky entertainment that was in one of the establishments that was being frequented by the newly emerging lower and middle classes.  It is a chorus line of men and women doing the high kick, as opposed to the opera or the ballet.  It also is a good example of the influence of popular culture on Seurat's work recalling Jules Cheret's posters that were all over Paris at the time.  In Le Chahut, Seurat has taken all the elements that interested him from the contemporary culture and redefined it all in his own terms of geometry, color and harmony.  

Georges Seurat - Les Poseuses

Georges Seurat, Les Poseuses,1886-1888
(Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania)

Here Seurat depicts three models (they are probably the same woman in different poses) in the process of getting undressed in order pose for the artist, in his studio.  They stand in front of his painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, with their paraphernalia strewn around them, making us aware of their state of undress and their status as working women.  The three women bring to mind the Three Graces from Greek mythology, viewed from front, side and back but Seurat dispels any notion of a timeless mythological narrative here with not only the contemporaneousness of the clothing that the models have taken off but also through the very commonplace practice of models taking off their costumes to pose for the artist.

Seurat's work encompasses a lot of tension, between idealized art and modern science, as well as popular culture and elite, high art.  Here, the artist's interest in the artistic ideals of the past, is evident thorough how he has incorporated the figures in this painting from known references in traditional art; something his contemporary audience would have immediately recognized.

                 

Ingres, The Bather of Valpincon, 1808

Les Poseuses has been interpreted as a reworking of the representation of the female nude in Western art. We can trace the sources of his inspiration right here.

The model on the left is taken from Ingres' The Bather of Valpincon, recalling the tradition of the female nude in French art.  Seurat has the model seated partially covered with a sheet around her buttocks, facing  away from the viewer completely while the Ingres is almost a 3/4 view of a totally nude figure.

Venus Pudica, Greek 1st C. BC

The woman standing in the middle is a reference to Venus Pudica ( the modest Venus) a term used for the classical female nude in traditional Western art that is covering her genitalia.  One of the most famous works of the ancient Greek sculptor, Praxiteles of Athens, form 4th century B.C. was the Aphrodite of Cnidus which is now lost but the best- known type of this Venus is a copy signed by Menophantos from 1st century BC.  This gesture has been used by artists throughout the history of western art including Sandro Botticelli in The Birth of Venus.  Seurat recalls this pose but has taken off the drapery and the elongated grace out of the traditional figure.

  

Spinario, Boy with Thorn in His Foot, 
Roman marble copy c.25-50

The young woman with the green stockings is taken from Spinario, Boy with Thorn, a statue which was one of the few Roman statues that was not lost; it was a favorite with artists from different generations to reference. Here Seurat has taken the boy and made him a woman and instead of taking a thorn out of his foot, she is putting stockings on her feet.

Eadweard Muybridge

Seurat was also very interested in the technological advancements of his time.  In the late 1870's photographer Eadweard Muybridge was working on capturing figures in motion in a series of photographs. The three different poses recalling Muybridge's works about the human body in motion, could be attributed to Seurat's interest in photography. 

The stiff formality of La Grande Jatte, has been softened  in Les Poseuses making the figures appear more natural but the tension that is often seen in Seurat's work is present between what is the disarrayed scene before and inside the monumental masterpiece.  The whole painting is united by the use of color; the artist's studio that is seen in front of the frame of La Grand Jatte contains the exact same shades of colors that are inside the painting's frame, creating an ambiguous image blurring the difference between the artwork and reality of the studio.

Everything about Les Poseuses, seems to be reinforcing the idea of 'art as artifice.' By using classical idealized elements of traditional art, Seurat has constructed a contemporary, matter-of-fact scene that is taking place in his studio.  We can further delve into his motives by looking at the dictionary definition for the word 'Poseuse' which is a person who habitually pretends to be something he is not.  This is yet another thought provoking painting by Seurat that is open to many interpretations.  

Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900

A fascinating exhibit is going on right now at the Victoria & Albert Museum (one of my favorite museums in the world) The concepts introduced are relevant to other artistic movements as well... the obsession with 'Red Hair' for example can be picked up in Degas' series of women at their toilette.

Edgar Degas, The Tub, 1886
(Musee d'Orsay)

Georges Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, continued

George Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Is this monumental painting by Georges Seurat a commentary on artifice, about alienation of modern life or is it actually a utopian vision?

There are clues to support both arguments, the calm and peacefulness that permeates the whole canvas, and the harmony of people from different classes enjoying a sunny day on the Island of Grand Jatte could be considered a utopian ideal of how society should be, representing a peaceful time in France without any war or revolutions. Everything in the painting is calm and sedate almost as if Seurat has captured and immortalized the one perfect moment.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Sacred Grove, 1884
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Art historian Linda Nochlin puts forth another idea though - that this is actually a criticism of modern society, an anti-utopian image.  Since everyhting should be analyzed in the right context, she starts her argument by first explaining what was considered Utopian at the time this painting was painted. The Sacred Grove by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, was exhibited in the Salon of 1884, the year Seurat started working on A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and according to Lochlin Seurat's painting might never have come into existence or at least not in this way if it was not for his older contemporary's work. If the Impressionists were the painters of modern life, depicting everyday events, people dressed in contemporary fashions going about in places that were in vogue at the time, then Puvis and his timeless muses in classical settings without any specificity was the antithesis of this type of painting.  Seurat seems to be enforcing the contemporaneousness and exactitude of his work even in his title - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  But Seurat's work was also in contrast to the  Impressionist's works like Renoir, who had created his own utopian vision in Dance at the Moulin de la Galette.  While Renoir's typical hazy brushwork, with fusing colors in this idyllic scene of merriment amongst the young working class women and middle class artists made the modern urban scene seem very natural, Seurat's stoic figures depicted in his highly technical brushwork made it seem strange.

Pierre-August Renoir, Dance at the Moulin de la Galette,1876
(Musee d'Orsay)

According to Nochlin, Seurat's painting can be interpreted as a criticism of the  banality and monotonousness of modern life with cookie-cutter figures standing around in what she calls his sardonic pageant of frozen recreation.1

Seurat achieved this almost mechanical impression due to his repetitive technique of divisionism, applying small dot-like strokes of similar size and shape on top of a uniform color.  The separate colors were supposed to be mixed by the viewers eye.  He used different patterns for different parts of the painting that was so elaborately done that at an ideal distance it was supposed to look like the real thing.  
Georges Seurat was familiar with Michel Eugene Chevreul's book, On the Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Color, which confirmed that harmony can be achieved by juxtaposing similar intensities of the same color or by balancing contrasting colors.  Chevreul proposed that combinations of complementary colors appear pleasing to the eye.  This is especially apparent in the frame of the painting that Seurat added later on to form a transitional zone to make the picture pop.  He also used what is known as the Chevreul illusion, when you put a slightly darker tone next to a slightly lighter tone the eye is tricked to see the outer edge darker. Seurat darkened the edges where they met the light areas to achieve a sharper contrast between the figure and the ground. 


Seurat made 27 preliminary sketches for this painting.  The landscape was en plein air study but for the figures he made drawings in his studio. The final sketch for the Grande Jatte was done in balaye, a criss-cross brush stroke. When looking at his separate sketches in becomes more apparent how he built up the final image for his painting. 

Georges Seurat, Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The technique and the structure of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, seem to reinforce the alienating, banal  and dehumanizing aspects of modern life.  As Linda Nochlin points out, "Seurat, with the dot, resolutely and consciously removed himself as a unique being projected by a personal handwriting."2  Georges Seurat, by his mechanical, disembodied construction of his painting undermined the Western tradition of representation and in the process angered a big part of the art community.  Especially Monet and Renoir hated this loss the sense of spontaneity and didn't show their work in the last Impressionist exhibit of 1886.  But a movement beyond Impressionism for avant-garde painting had already started to evolve and as a response to Seurat, Monet painted his version of monumental figures in landscape in strictly impressionist terms. 

1  Linda Nochlin, Seurat's Grande Jatte: An Anti-Utopian Allegory, 255-258
2  Ibid., 255

From My Favorite Turkish Poet and Writer - Sunay Akin

Gustave Caillebotte, A Young Man at
his Window, 1876

There can be so many things that hurt me; but I still keep quiet, languish
I let it happen actually.  Because I am stupid?  No!
Because that person is indispensable? No.
I won't say "Go!" to anyone, I can't.
After all that happens, I still cherish them so much,
So they may be ashamed of the things they do everyday,
But one day, I leave in such a way,
I have nothing to lose.


                       Sunay Akin
                  (Turkish Poet, Writer)

Georges Seurat - Pointillism - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884
(The Art Institute of Chicago)

Georges Seurat was a key post-impressionist painter who changed the course of modern art by his use of latest scientific theories on color and light and it's relationship to optical theories.  His monumental masterpiece A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, not only shook the foundations of the art world by its use of the divisionist technique of applying small points of unmodulated color to be mixed in the viewer's eye instead of the artist's palette but also the obvious mixing of people from different social classes out for a leisurely Sunday, by the Seine, each enjoying nature in their own way.

Seurat, who exhibited this painting in the last Impressionist exhibit in 1886 was only 26 years old at the time.  He came from a wealthy family who supported him throughout his life that ended at age 31.  Georges Seurat started his artistic career with a very classical training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but quit after a year and half.  Following a mandatory year of military service, he continued working on black and white drawings and small scale paintings.  Only four years after leaving art school, he started the project that would take two years to complete and end up to be this monumental canvas.

Georges Seurat was very interested in art from antiquity, in Greek and Roman sculptures. In his works there is a tension between the contemporary, popular culture and references to elite high art of Egyptian, Greek and Romans.  He also looked to the work of early 19th century artists like Gustave Courbet, Francois Millet as well as Impressionists like Camille Pissaro.

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857
(Musee d'Orsay)

Georges Seurat, Farm Women at Work,
1882-1883
(Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY)

In his early work, Seurat was interested in the 19th century obsession of  peasant in the field imagery.  In the Farm Women at Work, it is easy to see him looking to Millet.  He has taken the two figures from The Gleaners and reversed their directions.  The yellow sunlight reflecting off of the green grass demonstrates his desire to represent light, like Monet.  The one fundamental difference in Seurat's work is the way he put down the reflected lights next to the local color of green in the grass by what is called balaye, a criss-cross brush stroke. In order to create a more vivid and luminous effect, he used juxtaposition of tones of similar colors next to each other for the viewer's eye to blend them on the canvas.

Seurat's interest in luminosity, the linear design element and the extremely important edges of objects can all be found in his black and white drawings in conte crayon on Michallet paper.  These drawings were not preliminary sketches but drawings done as finished works.  He would fill in his subject with conte crayon and then take out the light areas by erasing them, darkening the edges so the lighter area would separate the figure from the background.  The texture of the paper would not allow the crayon to absolutely soak into the paper, allowing the light of the background to shine through, enabling to create lightness.

Georges Seurat, Aman-Jean, 1882-1883

                         

Georges Seurat, The White Coat (The Woman with
 White Umbrella) 1883

Georges Seurat, Eden Concert, 1886-1887

In these drawings, Seurat achieved an aura-like effect around his figures which can be seen very clearly around the umbrella in The White Coat.  To make his subjects pop out, he began to darken the edges like the man's nose in Aman-Jean and the woman's skirts in The White Coat, this helped to separate the figure from the background.  He used the same technique in his paintings as well and the darkened edges caused not only the figures to pop from the background but also helped to reinforce each figure's own space. Even though there is an ambiguity surrounding the exact message Seurat was trying to convey in his art as to whether it was a critique or praise for the modern way of life, his technique seem to work to great effect in all his works.