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00:00:00Early in October of 1869, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir readied themselves for a painting
00:00:12expedition. Both of the young artists were desperately short of cash. It had taken them
00:00:23all summer long to scrape together enough money to buy their painting supplies.
00:00:30Now, they were eager to experiment. Rather than transcribe the details of a scene, they
00:00:50wanted to capture a fleeting moment in time. The shimmer of water. The reflection of light.
00:01:00The movement of people.
00:01:02As Monet and Renoir painted by the River Seine, they were rejecting everything that was expected,
00:01:04and traditional in art. As Monet and Renoir painted by the River Seine, they were rejecting everything
00:01:11that was expected and traditional in art. And together with a few like-minded artists, they
00:01:18were about to launch what was not just a new style of painting, but a revolution in the world.
00:01:24of art. A revolution that would become known as Impressionism.
00:01:31A revolution that would become known as Impressionism.
00:01:38Impressionism is now seen as a very comfortable art. We love it. We find it very surreal. We
00:01:45very serene and pleasing. Impressionist art, when it happened, was the toughest, most
00:01:52radical, most challenging art, most challenging art of any period in history. It was one of the
00:01:59big breaks in the big breaks in history of art. It was one of the big breaks in history of art.
00:02:06There's a story in Impressionism. There's a story in Impressionism of overturning the past and starting the history of art all over again. But there's also a marvellous story of the
00:02:13of a group of individuals who were so different who were so different and so brave and so
00:02:20humorous. It was the toughest, most radical, most challenging art of any period in history. It was one of the big breaks in history of art.
00:02:26There's a story in Impressionism of overturning the past and starting the history of art all over again. But there's also a marvellous story of a group of individuals who were so different and so brave and so humorous.
00:02:42and so willing to work with each other that they could make this incredible thing in the history of art happen.
00:03:12Claude Monet,
00:03:13Claude Monet, uncompromising and demanding of himself and everyone around him. He expected fame and wealth from the beginning.
00:03:23Auguste Renoir was nostalgic and respectful of artistic tradition. A painter of modern life, Renoir would eventually turn his back on all that was modern.
00:03:37Bert Morisot was brilliant at maintaining an image of absolute respectability. At a time when it was not respectable for a woman to be a professional artist.
00:03:52Camille Pissarro considered himself an anarchist. But in practice, he was kind and soft-spoken.
00:04:01His friends thought of him as God the Father. Edgar Degas was argumentative and obsessive. A perfectionist until the day he died, Degas could barely bring himself to call a work finished.
00:04:19They shared one simple but entirely radical idea. That it was time to discard the rules of the past and paint what they saw through their own eyes. Through what they called their sensation.
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00:05:35In the spring of 1859, a young aspiring painter took the long journey from the Normandy coast
00:05:53to Paris. The young painter was 19-year-old Claude Monet. He was eager to get his first
00:06:03look at the Salon, the state-run art show. The Salon was a huge event. Hundreds of thousands
00:06:16came each year to see art jammed floor to ceiling in gallery after gallery.
00:06:28In 1859, there was no such thing as Impressionism. The art on display was academic art. And
00:06:38the most respected works were full of mythological or religious themes and were known as history
00:06:45paintings. Monet hoped to one day have his art exhibited at the Salon, for acceptance in
00:06:54the Salon was the only way an artist could gain real recognition. But Monet had no intention
00:07:02of making history paintings. Still, he did want to stay in Paris and develop his craft
00:07:09as a painter. His father agreed to help him with an allowance, if he studied with an established
00:07:16master. Monet took the allowance but ignored his father's wishes. He joined the Academie Suisse,
00:07:26which wasn't actually an academy, but a space where artists could come to draw the nude without
00:07:32instruction. When his father found out, he was furious.
00:07:36The long-standing tale is that his father cut him off. He felt that if he wasn't going to be part of
00:07:44a studio, that this was not the way he was supposed to go about a career, that if he was going to live
00:07:50higgily-piggily in Paris, then that was his choice, so he would have to make it on his own.
00:07:55It was still normal for an artist to have to go through a process of drawing from casts and then drawing
00:08:01from the live model and learning from the art of classical antiquity. Monet already felt when he
00:08:07first went to Paris in 1859 that an artist should learn from what he saw around him and not learn
00:08:13from formal rules. And at the same time, he's clearly somebody who cultivated an image as a teenage rebel.
00:08:19He's always concerned with projecting an image of somebody who acquired notoriety not only through his
00:08:26art, but actually through who he was. I could never bend to any rule, Monet once said,
00:08:34even as a very small child. Claude Monet was born November 14th, 1840, the second son of Louise Justine
00:08:46and Adolph Monet. They were hard-working merchants in the port town of Le Havre.
00:08:56The young Monet had little interest in school, and he spent as much time as he could on the cliffs
00:09:02and beaches around Le Havre. From early on, he loved to draw. By the time he was a teenager, Monet was
00:09:13making caricatures of notable Le Havre citizens. He was quite good at it, and before long the local
00:09:22stationer displayed Monet's drawings in the shop window. His work sold well, at 20 francs apiece.
00:09:35While at the stationer's one day, he met a local landscape artist, Eugène Boudin.
00:09:45I hope you are not going to confine yourself to this sort of thing, Boudin said,
00:09:49and he invited Monet to paint with him in the open air along the Normandy coast.
00:09:54Boudin helped spark Monet's passion for landscape painting, a passion that would never leave him.
00:10:12Monet described his work with Boudin as if it were like the rending of a veil.
00:10:17I understood, he said, what painting could be. My destiny as a painter opened up before me.
00:10:29Monet probably expected to be famous from very early on. The first painting from his hand is a
00:10:36highly accomplished picture that was submitted to an exhibition in Le Havre in 1858, and it is
00:10:42spectacular. It is also an example of an artist who was truly gifted. So he knew he had it within
00:10:50himself to go down into history, and he was determined to do it.
00:10:57In the spring of 1859, Monet left Le Havre carrying his art supplies and his life savings of 2,000 francs.
00:11:05He was headed for the capital of art, Paris.
00:11:24At the Académie Suisse, Claude Monet met another student who had no interest in academic training.
00:11:30His name was Camille Pissarro, a 29-year-old from the West Indies island of St. Thomas.
00:11:42Like Monet, Pissarro wanted to portray everyday life rather than the mythology of the past.
00:11:48Pissarro had, in fact, painted scenes of everyday life from the time he was a boy in St. Thomas.
00:12:07From the beginning, he sketched these portraits of young slaves,
00:12:19but with none of those kind of sentimental, fatherly type of approach. There's a directness and a
00:12:26simplicity that was very, very unusual. Clearly, he felt very much at home with people of a different
00:12:35social milieu from his. Pissarro felt at home with people of a different social milieu,
00:12:46because he did not feel at home within his own community.
00:12:55Pissarro's father, Frederic, a Jewish immigrant from Bordeaux, France,
00:12:59had married a member of his own family, his Aunt Rachel, breaking Jewish law.
00:13:07The Jewish community in St. Thomas would forever scorn the Pissaros for this illegitimate union.
00:13:18Camille Pissarro was the ultimate outsider. St. Thomas is a small place, and when your mom and dad
00:13:23aren't legitimately married, and they're not recognized in the synagogue, and the other Jews
00:13:29don't like them, and blah, blah, blah, it's a kind of situation in which you have to learn to persist,
00:13:34and to keep on going.
00:13:38By the time he was a teenager, Pissarro knew he wanted to be an artist.
00:13:45But his father wanted him to help run the family store.
00:13:48Pissarro's father expected his son to pick up the business and just become a dutiful son who would
00:13:57follow his parents' footsteps. Not only did he not do that, he ran away from home to become,
00:14:02what, an artist? God forbid. This is just something that was absolutely unacceptable.
00:14:11When Pissarro ran away in 1852, he left behind his middle-class life,
00:14:17determined to make his way as an artist. He traveled through the West Indies and on to Venezuela.
00:14:37And in 1855, he settled in Paris.
00:14:40Once there, he managed to reconcile with his parents.
00:14:47They had recently moved to Paris themselves,
00:14:50and set up housekeeping with a generous staff of servants.
00:14:57One of the servants was 21-year-old Julie Vallée.
00:15:00She posed for Pissarro in 1858, and the two secretly began an affair.
00:15:10He happened to fall in love with a very simple, simple woman who barely could read.
00:15:16Not even the cook of his parents, but the cook's help.
00:15:18When Pissarro broke the news to his parents, it gave them the shock of their lives.
00:15:27Julie was not only a lowly servant girl, she was Catholic, and she was pregnant.
00:15:35Well, Pissarro's mother just absolutely refused to have anything to do with Julie.
00:15:39The Pissarro's fired Julie and cut off their son's allowance.
00:15:50Julie suffered a miscarriage, but Pissarro refused to leave her.
00:15:55They would go on to have eight children over the next 21 years.
00:16:04And their relationship would last the rest of their lives.
00:16:16Pissarro's mother never acknowledged Julie.
00:16:27But before long, she put aside just enough of her outrage to send her son a small monthly allowance.
00:16:33Camille Pissarro escaped the family turmoil by concentrating ever harder on his landscape painting and figure drawing.
00:16:55While sketching the nude at Académie Suisse late in 1859, Pissarro met Claude Monet.
00:17:03Pissarro and Monet were soon off together on painting expeditions.
00:17:13They portrayed scenes that had traditionally been considered unworthy of attention.
00:17:18A telegraph tower.
00:17:21An open field.
00:17:24A dreary factory.
00:17:27They painted subjects that were not imbued with cultural meaning.
00:17:30If I went out and painted the suburbs, you'd think, oh my god, you know, what is this?
00:17:35Is there any meaning in this?
00:17:37And that was what the French thought.
00:17:38By choosing their own countryside, they did something radical.
00:17:43They made images out of an unholy or an unhistorical landscape.
00:17:49There's no doubt that the notion that we, in the 19th century, that is, were in a new age, contributed to the desire for artists and for musicians and the like to be able to look at their time and to find the values in that moment.
00:18:06Not to look to the past or to mythology, but to really look at the ways in which their own civilization was reshaping the concepts of the world.
00:18:17Monet could not have been happier, except for one thing.
00:18:30Between his painting trips, the studio costs, and his particular enjoyment of big city nightlife, Monet was living beyond his means.
00:18:39His savings of 2,000 francs was quickly depleted.
00:18:47Life could be relatively cheap if somebody had somewhere to live.
00:18:51Obviously, subsistence is one thing, comfort is something else, and Monet certainly ideally expected comfort.
00:18:57He always loved fancy shirts with ruffles on it, he liked to drink better wines.
00:19:06So there were occasions when, plenty of occasions, when he was short of ready cash.
00:19:16But Monet did not get much time to make his way in Paris.
00:19:19In March of 1860, he was conscripted into the peacetime army for seven years of service.
00:19:31Monet's father offered to pay the government for a replacement for his son, a common practice for those wealthy enough to afford it.
00:19:39In return, he wanted his son back home to help in the family store.
00:19:43Claude Monet refused the offer, and instead opted to join the cavalry in Algeria.
00:19:53He felt that an adventure in Algeria was preferable to a mundane life as a shopkeeper.
00:20:05But Monet paid a heavy price for his decision.
00:20:07His career as an artist was now on indefinite hold.
00:20:14Early in 1861, August Renoir enrolled in L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the School of Fine Arts.
00:20:43The training ground for academic artists.
00:20:50At the age of 20, Renoir had already had a successful career as a porcelain painter.
00:20:58But at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he soon ran into trouble.
00:21:02Renoir had entered a studio class run by Charles Gler,
00:21:07an academic artist who insisted on the primacy of drawing, line, and form.
00:21:13It's not the only way to do it.
00:21:15Renoir liked to paint with brighter colors.
00:21:18Gler was concerned that devilish color, as he called it, might go to a student's head.
00:21:26As polite and as respectful of authority as he was, I think when he came to paint and draw,
00:21:32even from a very early time, he did not accept any tutelage.
00:21:36He was not prepared to have someone tell him that this was not the way to do it.
00:21:43Gler saw little promise in Renoir, and Renoir's wealthier classmates saw him only as an outsider.
00:21:50He starts off coming from a lowly background.
00:21:55Renoir gets himself into a quite different world because he becomes a fine artist.
00:22:00He moves from being an artisan or a decorator to painting fine art for art exhibitions.
00:22:05He goes into this world that people associated with elevated status,
00:22:12which is totally different from this humble background that he came from.
00:22:18Renoir had grown up the sixth child of seven in the slums that stood in the shadows of the Louvre.
00:22:24But instead of running with the boys in his neighborhood, he roamed through the great museum, absorbing the work of the masters.
00:22:41As a little boy, Auguste decorated the walls of his home with drawings made from charcoal he'd taken from the stove.
00:22:47When he turned 15, his parents apprenticed him to a porcelain painter.
00:22:56His new boss was impressed, and the young Renoir was soon earning the handsome salary of 20 francs a month.
00:23:06Renoir carefully saved every centime he could to fund his art education.
00:23:11And in 1861, he began his official studies in the studio of Charles Gleyer.
00:23:20I was always quiet in my corner, very attentive, very docile, studying the model, listening to the teacher.
00:23:29And it was I who they called the revolutionary, Auguste Renoir.
00:23:34Renoir kept up his studies at Gleyer's for month after month, doing his best to capture the line and form of the model.
00:23:49Renoir had been at Gleyer's for an entire year when three new students entered the studio.
00:24:09And soon, he was part of a circle of like-minded friends,
00:24:13which included Frédéric Bazille, a 21-year-old with plenty of money,
00:24:19Alfred Cisley, a Parisian born of English expatriates,
00:24:23and a 22-year-old, fresh out of the army, Claude Monet.
00:24:31After a year of peacetime cavalry service, Monet had come down with typhoid fever and was sent home to recover.
00:24:40Adolphe Monet once again offered to buy out his son's army service.
00:24:44And this time, he would allow the young Monet to go back to Paris to paint.
00:24:50But first, he made his expectations clear.
00:24:55Get it into your head that you are going to work seriously this time.
00:25:00I want to see you in a studio, under the discipline of a reputable master.
00:25:06If you decide to be independent again, I shall cut off your allowance without a word.
00:25:15Monet immediately set off for Paris.
00:25:19And in the autumn of 1862, he entered the studio of Charles Gleyer.
00:25:24Like Renoir before him, Monet ran into trouble with Gleyer.
00:25:30Not bad. Not bad at all, that thing there.
00:25:34But it is too much in the character of the model.
00:25:37He has enormous feet.
00:25:39You render them as they are.
00:25:42All that is very ugly.
00:25:45When one draws a figure,
00:25:47one should always remember the art of classical antiquity.
00:25:52Charles Gleyer.
00:25:54I can only paint what I can see, Monet replied.
00:25:59He stayed with Gleyer to keep his father happy.
00:26:02But he was an uninterested student.
00:26:10Monet soon led his new friends,
00:26:12Renoir, Sisley, and Basile,
00:26:14out of the studio to paint landscapes in the open air.
00:26:17Camille Pissarro, Monet's friend from the Académie Suisse,
00:26:37joined in their expeditions.
00:26:38Monet drove himself hard.
00:26:49And he pushed his friends to do the same.
00:26:55Monet puts himself under a lot of pressure physically when he's working.
00:26:58And I'm sure that when his friends were working with him,
00:27:02that he would have expected them to do just the same.
00:27:05And as he was, in a sense, the leader, the most charismatic of them,
00:27:08I'm sure they'd have followed suit.
00:27:10They would have done what he asked in order to show that they were worthy of tagging along
00:27:13with this great force of nature that he was presenting himself as.
00:27:17Monet had established himself as the leader,
00:27:23the driving force behind his small band of artist friends.
00:27:30Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro
00:27:33would be at the center of a new movement in art.
00:27:39It would be a decade before this movement would be called Impressionism.
00:27:47In Paris, early in 1863,
00:28:14Claude Monet and Frédéric Basile
00:28:16went to see the work of Édouard Manet,
00:28:19a 31-year-old painter whose work, The Bath,
00:28:23had suddenly captured all attention.
00:28:27But the attention was all negative.
00:28:30The public stared with open jaw.
00:28:34The critics raged.
00:28:36And even Emperor Napoleon III weighed in,
00:28:39deeming the work immodest.
00:28:41With the bath, which he later renamed DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe,
00:28:49Édouard Manet catapulted himself into the limelight
00:28:52and into position as the new leader of the avant-garde.
00:28:56He had violated the academic rule that nudes were to look like goddesses.
00:29:05Manet's nude appeared to be a modern Parisian woman.
00:29:08I think that after the DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe, Manet is always visible.
00:29:16People remembered that picture.
00:29:18And certainly for younger artists who were looking at modern life subjects,
00:29:22like the group that turns out to be the Impressionists,
00:29:24Manet is there absolutely a focus,
00:29:26and also a personal friend, a supporter,
00:29:28when they all get to know each other.
00:29:43And they all got to know each other at the Café Gerbois.
00:29:48Claude Manet brought his friends, Sisley and Basile,
00:29:52as well as Renoir and Pissarro.
00:29:54Edouard Manet was a fixture there.
00:30:01And Manet's friend, the painter Edgar Degas,
00:30:04often showed up, started an argument,
00:30:07and then left in the middle of it.
00:30:12Manet had first met Degas at the Louvre in 1861.
00:30:18For Degas, the Louvre was the Holy of Holies.
00:30:21It was his temple.
00:30:22He wasn't a religious man, but if he had a religion, it was art,
00:30:26and that's where he went to worship and pay homage.
00:30:30He would go there regularly to copy, to draw,
00:30:33all the way through his life.
00:30:36The masters must be copied again and again.
00:30:41And only after having given every indication of being a good copyist,
00:30:46can you reasonably be given leave to draw a radish from nature.
00:30:50Edgar Degas had first applied to copy the masters at the Louvre a decade earlier,
00:31:03just after he'd finished his schooling in 1853.
00:31:06He worked to perfect his technique in preparation for his first submission
00:31:28to the one and only major art exhibition each year, the Salon.
00:31:37But a year passed, and then another,
00:31:40and Degas seemed unable to paint anything he thought satisfactory.
00:31:44His father, Auguste, who had been supporting his grown son with an ample allowance,
00:31:52grew impatient.
00:31:54Our Raphael is still working, but he has yet to turn out a finished product.
00:32:02Meanwhile, the years are slipping by.
00:32:05Auguste Degas was a banker who seemed to pay more attention to Renaissance art
00:32:14than to managing finances.
00:32:18Edgar Degas' mother, Celestine, had died when he was only 13 years old.
00:32:23And Edgar, the oldest of five children, seemed to keep his grief to himself.
00:32:28Frankly, Degas lacked love.
00:32:33He grew up, I think, emotionally stunted, for want of a better word.
00:32:39And perhaps he never really caught up.
00:32:42He never really made good.
00:32:46Degas got his own studio in 1859
00:32:48and spent much of his time there alone.
00:32:51It seems to me, Degas said,
00:32:58that if one wants to be a serious artist,
00:33:01one must constantly immerse oneself in solitude.
00:33:09Degas found himself lonely and depressed.
00:33:15He painted his own image over and over again.
00:33:18Always with the same dark expression.
00:33:28He was easily discouraged.
00:33:32Doubted his own ability.
00:33:35Worried endlessly.
00:33:42As a young man, there were moments when he really withdrew into himself.
00:33:48There were periods of his life that we can point to
00:33:52where he seems to have gone through something
00:33:54that would be called depression today.
00:34:09He continued to paint history painting after history painting.
00:34:13And he still was not satisfied with his work.
00:34:22Degas would make sketch after sketch.
00:34:25Revise.
00:34:28Make preliminary compositions.
00:34:33Revise again.
00:34:34Then he would start his final version on canvas.
00:34:44Only to scrape off and begin again.
00:34:47What Degas was trying to do was probably impossible.
00:35:02One side of him was telling him as a young artist
00:35:05he needed to paint these big, grand, ambitious compositions
00:35:09in a rather traditional manner
00:35:11which would go in the salon and announce his talent.
00:35:16Another part of him was pulling him in a completely different direction.
00:35:19He was getting interested in modern life painting.
00:35:22And that dichotomy that he was...
00:35:25He had his feet still in the past
00:35:26but his artistic world was that of the modern, late 19th century
00:35:32was tearing these pictures apart in some ways.
00:35:37Degas kept on creating history paintings
00:35:40but he also began in the autumn of 1861
00:35:43to paint modern subjects.
00:35:48Degas enjoyed the horse races
00:35:50and endlessly sketched scenes at the track.
00:35:55But instead of placing the horses in the midst of a mythical battle
00:35:59Degas painted them as he saw them.
00:36:11With the horse races
00:36:13Degas had found a subject that he would return to
00:36:16again and again.
00:36:19In about half a dozen pictures
00:36:21he experimented with modern techniques
00:36:24for bringing across, for example,
00:36:26the excitement of being in a crowd of people
00:36:29watching horses moving at great speed
00:36:32and the sense of bustle
00:36:34and the sense of noise and so on
00:36:36that you get at a racetrack.
00:36:39He cuts off horses at the side of the picture.
00:36:47He puts in bright colours
00:36:48in the jockey's shirts
00:36:51and in the saddles, etc.
00:36:53He's really trying to make new, lively,
00:36:58quite disruptive painting.
00:37:11Degas was still an unknown painter in 1865
00:37:14but his friend, Edouard Manet,
00:37:18was once again on centre stage.
00:37:20Manet's salon submission, Olympia,
00:37:26a painting of a woman who appeared to be a prostitute,
00:37:29generated even more outrage
00:37:31than had his déjeuner sur l'herbe two years earlier.
00:37:37Manet did receive congratulations on some seascapes
00:37:40but the congratulations did not make him happy
00:37:43for the seascapes weren't by Manet
00:37:46but by Manet.
00:37:49Manet, the great figure of that moment,
00:37:52had this very controversial nude painting there
00:37:54and right nearby
00:37:56was Manet's beautiful picture
00:37:59of the beach at Scent Address.
00:38:03Critics came along
00:38:04and then were saying,
00:38:05is it Manet?
00:38:05Is it Manet?
00:38:06Is it Manet?
00:38:06Is it Manet?
00:38:07Manet and of course the young pup,
00:38:09Manet, being junior to Mr. Manet,
00:38:11was undoubtedly pleased with that kind of confusion
00:38:14whereas the elder Manet,
00:38:15it is often said,
00:38:17was a little distressed
00:38:18that somebody was either appropriating his fame
00:38:20or indeed even confusing with his name.
00:38:25Confusion aside,
00:38:27Manet was in fact well received.
00:38:29He had submitted his work to the salon
00:38:31for the first time that year
00:38:33and the critics immediately took notice.
00:38:37Monsieur Manet,
00:38:38unknown yesterday,
00:38:40has made a reputation by this picture alone.
00:38:44His seascape is the most original and supple,
00:38:47the most strongly and harmoniously painted
00:38:49to be exhibited in a long time.
00:38:56The praise lifted his spirits
00:38:59but it did not fatten his wallet.
00:39:01In fact, Manet was low on money
00:39:03but this didn't stop him
00:39:06from making big plans.
00:39:09From Paris,
00:39:10he traveled to Fontainebleau Forest
00:39:12where he began work
00:39:14on a large-scale painting for the salon.
00:39:17He would name it
00:39:18DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe,
00:39:21Luncheon on the Grass.
00:39:24Manet hoped the painting
00:39:25would make him famous.
00:39:27But this time,
00:39:30his outsized ambition
00:39:32would get the best of him.
00:39:33My dear Basile,
00:39:43if you don't answer me by return mail,
00:39:45I'll think you've refused to help me out.
00:39:47I'm in despair.
00:40:01I beg you, my dear friend,
00:40:06don't leave me in the lurch.
00:40:07I no longer think of anything
00:40:10but my painting.
00:40:11And if I don't manage to bring it off,
00:40:13I think I'll go mad.
00:40:16Manet
00:40:17Claude Manet was in Fontainebleau Forest
00:40:22in the summer of 1865,
00:40:25waiting for Basile to compose
00:40:27for his new painting.
00:40:28While he waited,
00:40:31he painted the effect
00:40:32of light filtering through leaves.
00:40:34And he painted studies
00:40:35in preparation for a work
00:40:37he would call
00:40:38DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe.
00:40:43Basile finally arrived
00:40:45in late August,
00:40:46ready to model
00:40:46for several of the figures.
00:40:51Manet had a female model
00:40:53with him as well,
00:40:5419-year-old Camille Dancieux.
00:40:58He was doing something
00:41:02that was really
00:41:02insanely ambitious.
00:41:04He was trying to do something
00:41:06that would in some ways
00:41:07outshadow Manet's
00:41:08famous DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe.
00:41:16As Manet stood painting
00:41:18at his easel one morning,
00:41:19he was suddenly struck in the leg
00:41:21by an errant throw
00:41:22of a metal discus.
00:41:24Basile helped him into bed
00:41:29and rigged up a mechanism
00:41:30to drip cool water
00:41:32on the wound
00:41:33to reduce the swelling.
00:41:36With Manet unable
00:41:38to stand on his injured leg,
00:41:40the only artwork
00:41:41that got finished
00:41:41was Basile's
00:41:43The Improvised Field Hospital,
00:41:45painted in their room
00:41:46at the inn,
00:41:48LĂ©on d'Or.
00:41:48In October of 1865,
00:41:55Manet returned to Paris
00:41:56and started his final version
00:41:58of DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe
00:42:00on a canvas
00:42:01that stood 15 feet high
00:42:04and 20 feet long
00:42:05for a grand total
00:42:07of 300 square feet.
00:42:09This vast canvas,
00:42:13this DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe,
00:42:14was going to be
00:42:15the biggest painting
00:42:15he'd ever painted.
00:42:17Manet was very ambitious.
00:42:19He was ambitious
00:42:20from the beginning
00:42:21and everybody knew it.
00:42:23But early in 1866,
00:42:26after eight months
00:42:27of struggle,
00:42:28Manet stopped working
00:42:29on DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe.
00:42:32He decided that he could not
00:42:33finish the painting
00:42:34in time for the Salon.
00:42:35Not long after
00:42:39Manet abandoned
00:42:40his huge project,
00:42:42Edouard Manet
00:42:43changed the name
00:42:44of his The Bath
00:42:45to DĂ©jeuner sur l'herbe.
00:42:49Manet, Degas commented,
00:42:51could do nothing
00:42:52but imitate.
00:42:55Meanwhile,
00:42:56Manet was determined
00:42:57to get something
00:42:58substantial done
00:42:59for the Salon.
00:43:02He borrowed
00:43:03a fancy green dress
00:43:04for his model Camille.
00:43:06and quickly set to work.
00:43:08He was trying to meet
00:43:09the Salon deadline.
00:43:12Manet didn't waste time
00:43:13worrying about the pose
00:43:15or the style of the dress.
00:43:17It appears, in fact,
00:43:19that he took his inspiration
00:43:20from the pages
00:43:21of a popular fashion magazine.
00:43:23In the 1860s,
00:43:27Emile Zola
00:43:28had written of the group
00:43:30which would become
00:43:31called the Impressionists
00:43:32that they wanted
00:43:33to be able
00:43:34to capture
00:43:34the beauties
00:43:35of their moment.
00:43:37And that is
00:43:38a concept
00:43:39which ran
00:43:40very deeply
00:43:41through Manet
00:43:41and other Impressionists.
00:43:44Manet worked furiously,
00:43:46almost non-stop.
00:43:47He'd again set himself
00:43:49a steep challenge.
00:43:51The portrait of Camille
00:43:52was life-size
00:43:53on a canvas
00:43:54that stood
00:43:55nearly eight feet tall.
00:43:57Nonetheless,
00:43:58Manet managed
00:43:59to finish
00:43:59in a matter of days,
00:44:01just in time
00:44:02to submit his painting
00:44:03to the Salon jury
00:44:04in March of 1866.
00:44:09The jury found his
00:44:10Woman in a Green Dress
00:44:12acceptable.
00:44:13And Claude Monet
00:44:14was in the Salon
00:44:15for the second year
00:44:16in a row.
00:44:18And for the second year
00:44:19in a row,
00:44:20he received glowing reviews.
00:44:23Now there is a temperament,
00:44:25the journalist
00:44:25Emile Zola commented.
00:44:27There is a man
00:44:29among eunuchs.
00:44:36With the help
00:44:37of the favorable notices,
00:44:38Monet was able
00:44:39to sell several paintings.
00:44:42With money
00:44:43in his pocket,
00:44:44he traveled
00:44:44to Ville d'Avray
00:44:45to paint for the summer.
00:44:50Monet wanted
00:44:50to take the idea
00:44:51of painting out of doors,
00:44:53en plein air,
00:44:54to a new level.
00:44:58Claude Monet
00:44:58was ready to make
00:45:00a clean break
00:45:01with the past.
00:45:02Claude Monet
00:45:16settled in
00:45:16to Ville d'Avray
00:45:17for the summer
00:45:18of 1866.
00:45:20With him
00:45:21was his young model
00:45:22for Woman in the Green Dress,
00:45:24Camille Doncieux.
00:45:26Only by now,
00:45:27she was more
00:45:28than just his model.
00:45:29She was his mistress.
00:45:31Monet asked Camille
00:45:41to pose
00:45:41for several figures
00:45:42for his next painting,
00:45:44Women in the Garden.
00:45:48He was looking
00:45:49to capture
00:45:49the natural effects
00:45:50of light,
00:45:52and Monet felt
00:45:53that this could
00:45:53only be done
00:45:54outdoors,
00:45:56with his subject
00:45:56before him
00:45:57from the first brushstroke
00:45:58to the last.
00:46:02The practice
00:46:03of painting
00:46:03en plein air
00:46:04or out of doors
00:46:05was actually
00:46:05a very old practice.
00:46:08But when Monet decides
00:46:10to paint pictures
00:46:11exclusively out of doors,
00:46:13not touched up
00:46:14in the studio,
00:46:15that was radical.
00:46:15Auguste Renoir,
00:46:32meanwhile,
00:46:32was in Paris
00:46:33working in a style
00:46:34that was anything
00:46:35but radical.
00:46:37He was making
00:46:38a history painting
00:46:39portraying Diana,
00:46:41the goddess
00:46:41of the moon
00:46:42and hunt.
00:46:43He's still looking
00:46:46to make a name
00:46:47for himself
00:46:48in some ways
00:46:49in the traditional way.
00:46:51He's still looking
00:46:52to paint on a scale
00:46:53that will be acceptable
00:46:54at the salon.
00:46:56Renoir has no safety net.
00:46:58His parents,
00:47:00who are retired
00:47:01in Lufsiennes,
00:47:02as far as I know,
00:47:02he never asks them
00:47:03for a penny
00:47:04for his art.
00:47:06Late in March
00:47:07of 1867,
00:47:09Renoir and Monet
00:47:10submitted their work
00:47:11to the salon.
00:47:11The art
00:47:13and they were both
00:47:14rejected.
00:47:21Nearly a year
00:47:22of planning
00:47:23and work
00:47:23ended in failure.
00:47:29To the salon jury,
00:47:31their paintings
00:47:31simply were not
00:47:32academic enough.
00:47:35Even Renoir's
00:47:36history painting,
00:47:37Diana,
00:47:38was rejected
00:47:38because it did not
00:47:39have the perfectly
00:47:40blended colors
00:47:41and smooth surface
00:47:43that was demanded
00:47:44by the jury.
00:47:48Without a showing
00:47:49at the salon,
00:47:50Renoir and Monet
00:47:51had little hope
00:47:52of making any money
00:47:53off their years' work.
00:47:56And Monet
00:47:57desperately needed money.
00:48:00His mistress,
00:48:01Camille,
00:48:02was pregnant.
00:48:02This time,
00:48:06Monet got lucky.
00:48:08He sold women
00:48:09in the garden
00:48:09for an incredible sum,
00:48:112,500 francs.
00:48:13The buyer
00:48:14was his wealthy friend,
00:48:16Frédéric Basile.
00:48:18Basile would pay Monet
00:48:1950 francs a month
00:48:21out of his allowance.
00:48:23Basile then wrote
00:48:24Monet's father
00:48:25on his friend's behalf,
00:48:27begging him
00:48:27to help his son.
00:48:28But Adolf Monet
00:48:31refused to send
00:48:32any money.
00:48:34Instead,
00:48:34he offered
00:48:35free room and board
00:48:36for his son,
00:48:37but not for Camille.
00:48:40We assume
00:48:41that when Monet
00:48:42had set up
00:48:43with Camille
00:48:43that there was
00:48:44a problem
00:48:45with the family,
00:48:46that they simply felt
00:48:48that this was
00:48:48a bridge too far,
00:48:50that, okay,
00:48:50what went on in Paris
00:48:51behind closed doors
00:48:53was one thing,
00:48:54but having a mistress
00:48:55and an illegitimate child
00:48:56was something
00:48:57that was really
00:48:58a social stigma
00:48:59and that this
00:48:59was something
00:49:00that they simply
00:49:01couldn't be seen
00:49:02to be supporting.
00:49:07In June of 1867,
00:49:10Monet accepted
00:49:11his father's offer
00:49:12and returned
00:49:13to his boyhood home
00:49:14on the Normandy coast.
00:49:18Before leaving Camille,
00:49:20he found a medical student
00:49:21who agreed to attend
00:49:22the delivery
00:49:23in exchange
00:49:24for a painting.
00:49:28on August 8th, 1867,
00:49:33Camille gave birth
00:49:34to their baby,
00:49:36a healthy boy
00:49:37she named Jean.
00:49:41Monet could not even
00:49:42afford the train fare
00:49:44to visit his new son.
00:49:48He wrote to Basile
00:49:50to ask for an advance payment
00:49:51on his purchase
00:49:52of women in the garden.
00:49:54He was desperate
00:49:55to send money
00:49:56to Camille,
00:49:57but Basile did not reply.
00:50:03August 12th.
00:50:05You've been stubborn
00:50:06about answering me.
00:50:08I sent you letter
00:50:10after letter,
00:50:11rapid post.
00:50:12Nothing got a rise
00:50:13out of you.
00:50:14I've had to ask
00:50:15strangers for loans
00:50:16and subject myself
00:50:18to insults.
00:50:19I'm very angry with you.
00:50:21August 20th.
00:50:22I didn't think
00:50:23you'd abandon me like this.
00:50:24I no longer attribute
00:50:25your silence
00:50:26to an oversight.
00:50:26It's very wrong.
00:50:27So I no longer
00:50:28dare believe
00:50:29in your friendship.
00:50:30I'm in greater need
00:50:32than ever.
00:50:33You know why.
00:50:35I'm sick over it.
00:50:36October 14th.
00:50:36If you don't answer me,
00:50:38everything will be finished
00:50:39between us.
00:50:39I didn't think
00:50:40you would abandon me
00:50:41like this.
00:50:42One last time.
00:50:43It really is too bad.
00:50:44I tell you
00:50:44I'm in desperate stress.
00:50:46I've waited for the postman
00:50:47and every day
00:50:48it's the same.
00:50:50It pains me
00:50:51to think of his mother
00:50:52having nothing to eat.
00:50:56I think Monet used Basile
00:50:58as some sort of money purse
00:51:00at various points
00:51:01but at the same time
00:51:02Basile at times
00:51:03is very willing
00:51:04to help out
00:51:05when he could
00:51:05but at times
00:51:06Monet's constant letters
00:51:07must have been
00:51:08thoroughly aggravating.
00:51:10Early in 1868
00:51:12Monet sold a still life
00:51:14and was able
00:51:15to rejoin Camille
00:51:16and their baby Jean.
00:51:17They settled at an inn
00:51:21where Monet planned
00:51:22to paint
00:51:23for the spring.
00:51:26But before long
00:51:28he ran out of money
00:51:29yet again
00:51:30and the innkeepers
00:51:31ran out of patience.
00:51:34They threw Monet
00:51:36and his little family
00:51:37out into the night
00:51:38without even allowing them
00:51:39to gather their belongings.
00:51:45Monet found lodgings
00:51:46for Camille and Jean
00:51:48and then set out
00:51:49for Le Havre
00:51:50where he intended
00:51:51to inquire
00:51:51about a commission.
00:51:55When he stopped
00:51:56to change trains
00:51:57instead of continuing
00:51:59on to Le Havre
00:52:00Monet began walking
00:52:02toward the Seine.
00:52:07By the time
00:52:08he arrived at the river
00:52:09he found himself
00:52:11in such a state
00:52:11of melancholy
00:52:12that he threw himself
00:52:14headlong
00:52:15into the water.
00:52:25Claude Monet
00:52:26was 27 years old
00:52:28when he threw himself
00:52:29into the Seine.
00:52:31He was overwhelmed
00:52:33by debt
00:52:34and gloomy
00:52:34about his future.
00:52:37But he forced himself
00:52:39to swim back
00:52:39to the river's edge
00:52:40and pull himself out.
00:52:47The next day
00:52:48Monet sat down
00:52:49and scribbled
00:52:50a short note
00:52:50to Bazille.
00:52:54June 29th, 1868.
00:52:58I was certainly born
00:53:00under an unlucky star.
00:53:03My family
00:53:04has no intention
00:53:05of doing anything
00:53:06more for me.
00:53:09I was so upset yesterday
00:53:11that I was stupid enough
00:53:12to hurl myself
00:53:13into the water.
00:53:16Fortunately,
00:53:17no harm came of it.
00:53:20Monet.
00:53:24It was much more likely
00:53:25to be exasperation
00:53:27rather than a serious attempt
00:53:28to end everything.
00:53:29I think there's a sense
00:53:31in which he's always driven
00:53:33and he is somebody
00:53:34who was immensely ambitious.
00:53:37And you feel
00:53:38that there is a real sense
00:53:39of perseverance,
00:53:40of sort of dogged determination
00:53:41to win out in the end.
00:53:47Monet got back
00:53:48on the train
00:53:48and continued
00:53:49on to Le Havre.
00:53:52Once there,
00:53:53he paid a visit
00:53:54to an art collector
00:53:55and won a commission
00:53:56to paint several portraits.
00:54:04To top it off,
00:54:06Monet sold
00:54:07two of his seascapes.
00:54:13After Monet finished work
00:54:14on the portraits
00:54:15that fall,
00:54:16he took Camille
00:54:17and two-year-old Jean
00:54:19and moved
00:54:19to the Paris suburb
00:54:21of Bougival.
00:54:25Nearby lived Renoir,
00:54:28Sisley,
00:54:29and Pissarro.
00:54:32Camille Pissarro,
00:54:34like Monet,
00:54:35had been struggling.
00:54:37The 100 francs
00:54:38a month
00:54:38he received
00:54:39from his mother
00:54:39was never enough.
00:54:42Pissarro had to support
00:54:43his mistress,
00:54:44Julie,
00:54:45and their two children.
00:54:52So Pissarro took work
00:54:53painting canvas
00:54:54window blinds.
00:54:58One of his friends
00:54:59could not resist
00:55:00painting a view
00:55:01of the fine artist
00:55:02reduced to working
00:55:04as an artisan.
00:55:09Monet, though,
00:55:10would not even consider
00:55:11picking up other work
00:55:12to help pay the bills.
00:55:15And as the summer
00:55:16of 1869 progressed
00:55:18without a sale,
00:55:19Monet could hardly afford
00:55:21to buy food
00:55:21for his family.
00:55:23The idea that
00:55:25a painter would
00:55:26wake tables,
00:55:27for example,
00:55:27is really a more
00:55:28modern idea.
00:55:29Most painters
00:55:30in the 19th century,
00:55:32if they were going
00:55:33to be painters,
00:55:34survived on the thinnest
00:55:36of lines economically
00:55:37and made do
00:55:38as best they could.
00:55:39It was a question
00:55:40of devoting yourself
00:55:41utterly to painting
00:55:43and hopefully having
00:55:44some kind of family support.
00:55:48Renoir did his best
00:55:49to help the Monets,
00:55:51bringing leftover food
00:55:52from his parents' house
00:55:53whenever he could.
00:55:55Renoir, though,
00:55:56was himself out of money.
00:55:59My dear Basile,
00:56:01I'm staying with my parents,
00:56:03and I'm almost always
00:56:05at Monet's.
00:56:06They can't hold out
00:56:07much longer.
00:56:08They don't eat every day.
00:56:11I'm doing almost nothing
00:56:12because I don't have
00:56:13many colors.
00:56:15Things may go better
00:56:16this month.
00:56:17If they go better,
00:56:18I'll write you.
00:56:20Renoir.
00:56:26Meanwhile,
00:56:27Edgar Degas
00:56:28was able to concentrate
00:56:29fully on his art.
00:56:32He did not need to sell.
00:56:35At 35 years old,
00:56:36he still lived
00:56:37on a generous allowance
00:56:38from his father.
00:56:39He kept himself
00:56:42constantly focused
00:56:43on his art,
00:56:45always striving
00:56:46for perfection,
00:56:48always pushing
00:56:49to break new ground.
00:56:52He always seems
00:56:53to have been
00:56:54a step ahead
00:56:55of the company
00:56:56in terms of thinking
00:56:57about what was going on.
00:56:59And people became
00:57:00a bit fearful of him
00:57:01for that reason,
00:57:02that he wasn't somebody
00:57:03that you argued with.
00:57:04He would just cut the ground
00:57:05from under your feet.
00:57:06Degas kept himself
00:57:10ahead of the pack
00:57:11by constantly experimenting.
00:57:14He experimented
00:57:15with modern life themes,
00:57:18with the effect
00:57:20of artificial light,
00:57:23and with compositions
00:57:26that gave a sense
00:57:27of capturing
00:57:28a moment in time.
00:57:34But by the late 1860s,
00:57:36Degas could no longer
00:57:38ignore the fact
00:57:38that something was wrong
00:57:40with his eyesight.
00:57:45Bright light pained him.
00:57:48One eye refused to focus.
00:57:53His eye doctor gave him
00:57:55bad news.
00:57:58Degas had an irregular
00:57:59field of vision
00:57:59in his left eye
00:58:00and in his right eye
00:58:03almost no vision
00:58:04at all.
00:58:10Degas was thrown
00:58:12into despair,
00:58:14terrified that he was
00:58:15going to be
00:58:15completely blind.
00:58:18His world revolved
00:58:20around his painting.
00:58:23And Degas could not
00:58:24shake the feeling
00:58:25that his world
00:58:27was soon to end.
00:58:30Edgar Degas was
00:58:42just in his 30s
00:58:43when his eyesight
00:58:44began to fail him.
00:58:48He was tormented
00:58:50by the thought
00:58:50that his art career
00:58:51was ending.
00:58:52He begins to worry
00:58:56that he's going
00:58:57to go blind
00:58:58and have periods
00:58:59of depression
00:58:59because, of course,
00:59:00it's the worst
00:59:01possible thing
00:59:01if you're an artist.
00:59:04You can argue
00:59:05that his awareness
00:59:07of his sight problems
00:59:09makes him
00:59:10a more interesting artist
00:59:12and maybe even
00:59:12a better artist
00:59:13because he thought
00:59:15about sight.
00:59:15When you read
00:59:17his notebooks,
00:59:18you get a sense
00:59:19of how he wants
00:59:22to do new things,
00:59:24to see the world
00:59:26at new angles,
00:59:27to look at the city
00:59:28from above,
00:59:30from below.
00:59:31He does this wonderful
00:59:33pastel, I think it is,
00:59:36of a circus performer
00:59:38suspended from the ceiling,
00:59:42but he gets her
00:59:43from below
00:59:44at a very odd angle.
00:59:46So he really wants
00:59:47to see things new
00:59:50and I think
00:59:51a certain kind
00:59:52of objective distance.
00:59:55He doesn't want
00:59:55to make things pretty.
01:00:01Because he refused
01:00:03to make things pretty,
01:00:04he almost lost
01:00:05a good friend.
01:00:06On an evening
01:00:09in 1868,
01:00:10Degas visited
01:00:11with Edouard Manet.
01:00:14As always,
01:00:15Degas brought
01:00:16his sketchbook.
01:00:18And when Madame Manet,
01:00:20an accomplished pianist,
01:00:21began to play,
01:00:23Degas began to sketch.
01:00:27Degas returned
01:00:28to his studio
01:00:29to paint the scene.
01:00:31And when he was finished,
01:00:32he gave the work
01:00:33to the Manets
01:00:33as a gift.
01:00:36Edouard Manet
01:00:37took one look at it
01:00:39and suddenly slashed
01:00:40the canvas
01:00:41nearly in half,
01:00:43cutting out the portrait
01:00:43of his wife
01:00:44at the piano.
01:00:47He thought
01:00:48that Degas
01:00:48had made her look ugly.
01:00:53Degas was furious
01:00:54that his painting
01:00:55was ruined.
01:00:57But when a friend
01:00:58later asked
01:00:59if he was still
01:01:00mad at Manet,
01:01:01Degas replied simply,
01:01:03how could anyone
01:01:04stay on bad terms
01:01:05with Manet?
01:01:08Manet was known
01:01:09for being charismatic,
01:01:11urbane,
01:01:12even charming.
01:01:15Degas, on the other hand,
01:01:16was known to be difficult,
01:01:18remote,
01:01:19and overly argumentative.
01:01:21With his fellow male artists,
01:01:25he could be very dismissive
01:01:29and very critical.
01:01:31His relationship
01:01:32with the women artists
01:01:34that he was meeting
01:01:35as a young man
01:01:35are slightly different.
01:01:37He was clearly attracted,
01:01:39for example,
01:01:40to Bette Morisseau,
01:01:41who was a very beautiful
01:01:42young woman,
01:01:44and she moved
01:01:44in a sophisticated,
01:01:45cultured family,
01:01:46family society.
01:01:48And he fell
01:01:49a little bit in love
01:01:50with her
01:01:51towards the end
01:01:52of the 1860s.
01:01:53It never came to anything,
01:01:54he wasn't at all
01:01:55adept at making love
01:01:57in the 19th century set.
01:02:02Edma.
01:02:04Monsieur Degas
01:02:04came and sat next to me,
01:02:06pretending he was
01:02:07going to court me.
01:02:09But his courting
01:02:09was confined
01:02:10to a long commentary
01:02:11on Solomon's proverb,
01:02:13woman is the desolation
01:02:16of the righteous.
01:02:18I certainly do not
01:02:19find his personality
01:02:20attractive.
01:02:22He has wit,
01:02:24but nothing more.
01:02:26Your sister, Bette.
01:02:29Degas was a regular
01:02:30at Madame Morisseau's
01:02:32Tuesday night dinners,
01:02:33and he would become
01:02:34lifelong friends
01:02:36with Bette Morisseau.
01:02:38The Morisseau family
01:02:40was very well connected,
01:02:41and I think this was
01:02:42very important
01:02:43for Bette Morisseau
01:02:44when she was growing up,
01:02:46particularly,
01:02:46as a young woman,
01:02:48to have people
01:02:48like Edouard Manet
01:02:49visit the home,
01:02:51to listen to conversation
01:02:53which went beyond
01:02:54the domestic,
01:02:55or beyond the local
01:02:57concerns of an
01:02:58upper-middle-class family.
01:03:06As teenagers
01:03:07in the 1850s,
01:03:09Bette and her older sister,
01:03:11Edma, learned to paint.
01:03:12Like most other lessons
01:03:15girls of the Morisseau's
01:03:17class received,
01:03:18their painting lessons
01:03:19were simply to allow them
01:03:20to appear well-rounded
01:03:22enough to attract
01:03:23a suitable husband.
01:03:25But Bette and Edma
01:03:27took their art seriously.
01:03:32After they'd been painting
01:03:33for only a few years,
01:03:35Madame Morisseau received
01:03:36a disquieting letter
01:03:37from their instructor.
01:03:40With characters
01:03:41like your daughters,
01:03:43my teaching
01:03:44will make them painters,
01:03:46not minor amateur talents.
01:03:48Do you really understand
01:03:50what that means?
01:03:52In the world
01:03:53of the grand bourgeoisie
01:03:54in which you move,
01:03:55it would be a revolution.
01:03:57I would even say
01:03:58a catastrophe.
01:04:02There were so many arguments
01:04:04that to be a woman artist
01:04:07would sap one's femininity,
01:04:10would make it impossible
01:04:11to be married,
01:04:12would make it impossible
01:04:13to be a good mother,
01:04:14would make it impossible
01:04:15even to be a good-looking woman.
01:04:17And the biggest problem
01:04:20was that women
01:04:21were officially barred
01:04:23from any number
01:04:24of art institutions.
01:04:28The Morisseau girls
01:04:30were determined
01:04:30to press forward.
01:04:33Madame Morisseau, though,
01:04:35was worried
01:04:35that neither Edma nor Bette
01:04:37were concentrating
01:04:38on the real goal,
01:04:40marriage.
01:04:43In 1868,
01:04:45Edma was 28,
01:04:46Bette, 27,
01:04:48and Madame Morisseau
01:04:49felt it was about time
01:04:50they each found a husband.
01:04:55So she paraded suitors
01:04:57through the house.
01:04:59She made comments
01:05:00about her daughter's
01:05:01fading looks.
01:05:04But neither Edma nor Bette
01:05:06showed the slightest interest
01:05:07in marriage.
01:05:11Both girls, it seemed,
01:05:13were infatuated
01:05:14with Edouard Manet.
01:05:17I definitely think
01:05:18he has a charming character,
01:05:20Bette said.
01:05:21He pleases me infinitely.
01:05:26But Manet was already married.
01:05:29Bette called Manet's wife
01:05:31his fat Suzanne.
01:05:32And when Manet accepted
01:05:41a young woman
01:05:42as his student,
01:05:43Bette was instantly jealous.
01:05:50Manet was interested enough
01:05:52in Bette
01:05:53to ask her to pose for him.
01:05:54He was so taken
01:05:59by the dark,
01:06:00intelligent,
01:06:01even mysterious look
01:06:02that Morisseau gave him
01:06:04in The Balcony
01:06:05that he went on
01:06:06to make 13 more portraits
01:06:08of her.
01:06:08and the other day.
01:06:17He was more than a son.
01:06:18So he held
01:06:18the flowers
01:06:19and the other day.
01:06:21And I think
01:06:21he was also
01:06:22dying in his last time.
01:06:24And then,
01:06:24he was also
01:06:25terry to have
01:06:26the son of a man
01:06:26and the other day.
01:06:27And then,
01:06:28after his death,
01:06:28he was too softly
01:06:29and he was so
01:06:30未来,
01:06:30he was a man
01:06:31to be a man
01:06:31to come in with my mother.
01:06:32He was a woman
01:06:33to have a man
01:06:34to come in with a woman
01:06:35But Morisot was never alone with Manet.
01:06:45Through the many sittings,
01:06:47Berthe's mother was a constant chaperone.
01:06:52Madame Morisot was displeased
01:06:54that her daughter was not spending her time more wisely.
01:06:59Berthe Morisot persisted long past the age
01:07:03when she should have given up painting
01:07:04and gotten married according to conventional standards of femininity.
01:07:09And she became a driven artist
01:07:13in a way that alarmed and saddened her mother.
01:07:19Edma, though, succumbed to the pressure,
01:07:21and in March 1869, she married.
01:07:25With Edma gone, Berthe became filled with self-doubt.
01:07:31Morisot was very tough on herself.
01:07:33She was never complacent, she was never satisfied.
01:07:38She was tormented in many ways.
01:07:40Somehow she'd internalised a kind of negative self-image.
01:07:44She wonders often whether she should give it up
01:07:47at the point that her sister marries and has a baby.
01:07:49Morisot herself is tormented and says,
01:07:52should I give up painting too?
01:07:54Is it worth pursuing?
01:07:55It's such a struggle.
01:07:57Dearest Edma, I'm sad.
01:08:06I feel lonely, disillusioned, and old.
01:08:11I've done absolutely nothing since you left,
01:08:14and this is beginning to distress me.
01:08:16My painting never seemed to me as bad as it has in recent days.
01:08:23The sight of these daubs nauseates me.
01:08:28Berthe.
01:08:33Morisot suffered with what she called lamentation mania.
01:08:37For her, there were times when both art and life seemed too much to bear.
01:09:01Berthe Morisot struggled to pull herself from depression.
01:09:04Unmarried at the considerable age of 28,
01:09:11and her art career going nowhere,
01:09:13Morisot felt nothing but anguish.
01:09:22But early in the summer of 1869,
01:09:25she forced herself out of the house for a painting trip.
01:09:28She traveled over 500 kilometers
01:09:35to her sister Edma's house in Lorient,
01:09:38on the coast of Brittany.
01:09:45Once there, she was ready to paint.
01:09:49The trip would mark a new beginning
01:09:51for both Morisot and her art.
01:09:53Morisot was in a mood to experiment.
01:09:59She tried new techniques to portray light and brightness.
01:10:05She adopted a broader brush stroke.
01:10:09And she worked hard to portray a feeling of a moment captured.
01:10:12When she returned to Paris in September,
01:10:20she invited Manet over to see her harbor at Lorient.
01:10:27Manet couldn't quite understand
01:10:28why she'd left it in what he considered an unfinished state.
01:10:32But, nonetheless, he liked it.
01:10:37Manet looks at it and says,
01:10:39I'd like to have that painting.
01:10:41And all of a sudden, Morisot thinks,
01:10:43Manet, the great painter of his generation,
01:10:46he wants one of my pictures!
01:10:49And I think that was the moment
01:10:51at which she thinks to herself,
01:10:53yes, I am going to be also a great painter of my generation.
01:10:57Not long after Morisot returned from Lorient,
01:11:11Manet and Renoir were preparing
01:11:13to go on a painting expedition of their own.
01:11:18It had taken them the entire summer
01:11:20to scrape together enough money
01:11:22to buy their painting supplies.
01:11:25Now, in early October,
01:11:27they were ready.
01:11:32They went across the river from Louvassiennes
01:11:34to a nearby swimming area
01:11:36called La Grandouillère,
01:11:38the frog pond.
01:11:40And they began to experiment.
01:11:47Manet and Renoir wanted to capture
01:11:49the shimmer of water.
01:11:52Reflection.
01:11:57Movement.
01:11:58A fleeting impression.
01:11:58And to do so,
01:12:11they began using short strokes,
01:12:14commas, or dots.
01:12:15They left brush marks distinctly visible,
01:12:20and they paid close attention
01:12:22to the individual highlights
01:12:23of reflected color.
01:12:32Monet's and Renoir's experiments
01:12:34at La Grandouillère
01:12:36marked the debut
01:12:37of the Impressionist style.
01:12:39There are many moments
01:12:48when one might say
01:12:49Impressionism came into this world,
01:12:51kicking, screaming,
01:12:52slightly messy,
01:12:54but certainly in the late 1860s,
01:12:59when Monet and Renoir
01:13:01were painting it La Grandouillère,
01:13:03in addition to turning
01:13:06to contemporary life,
01:13:07they wanted to literally be able
01:13:09to heighten the impact
01:13:11of their work
01:13:12through formal means,
01:13:14color, brushwork,
01:13:16novel compositions,
01:13:16and this was an absolutely
01:13:18calculated affair.
01:13:21This idea of capturing the ephemeral,
01:13:26that modernity consists
01:13:27in pinning down
01:13:30what goes by so quickly,
01:13:32that modernity is captured
01:13:34in a minute, a second,
01:13:36a fraction of a second.
01:13:38This was part
01:13:39of the Impressionist impulse.
01:13:40The Impressionist impulse
01:14:06was not just shared
01:14:07by Monet and Renoir,
01:14:08but by Morisot,
01:14:13Sisley,
01:14:15and Pissarro.
01:14:26They were creating art
01:14:28that captured the modern moment,
01:14:30but the art world
01:14:32was not at all prepared
01:14:34for such a break
01:14:34with the past.
01:14:38In the spring of 1870,
01:14:46Claude Monet decided
01:14:47he would challenge
01:14:48the Salon Jury
01:14:49and submit his experimental work
01:14:51from La Grandouillère.
01:14:54Renoir opted to play it safe
01:14:56and chose more conservative paintings,
01:14:58The Bather
01:14:59and A Woman of Algeria.
01:15:02The Jury accepted Renoir's work.
01:15:05Monet's was rejected.
01:15:14Monet did his best
01:15:15to put his disappointment
01:15:16and anger aside
01:15:18and focus on his personal life.
01:15:22That spring,
01:15:23he asked Camille to marry him.
01:15:25After nearly four years together
01:15:30and with a three-year-old son in tow,
01:15:33Camille Doncier and Claude Monet
01:15:35were married in a small civil ceremony
01:15:37on June 28, 1870.
01:15:43He took Camille and Jean
01:15:44on a working honeymoon
01:15:46to the resort town of Trouville.
01:15:48There, Monet painted his new bride
01:15:55on the beach.
01:16:05Everything seemed bathed
01:16:06in a bright wash
01:16:08of sunlight and air.
01:16:12Monet's paintings reflected
01:16:13none of his worry over money
01:16:15or disappointment
01:16:16over his lack of recognition.
01:16:21Out of his group of artist friends,
01:16:23Monet had been the only one
01:16:25to be refused by the salon.
01:16:33But he wasn't the only one
01:16:35traumatized by the jury.
01:16:38Morisot was upset
01:16:39by the acceptance
01:16:40of one of her submissions,
01:16:42Portrait of the Artist's
01:16:43Mother and Sister.
01:16:45After completing the painting,
01:16:47Morisot wondered
01:16:48whether it was good enough
01:16:49to go to the salon.
01:16:51So she asked for Manet's opinion,
01:16:54a request she would
01:16:55immediately regret.
01:16:58Manet said it was fine
01:16:59except the bottom of the dress.
01:17:02He took the brushes,
01:17:03added a few accents
01:17:04that looked quite good.
01:17:06Then began my woes.
01:17:09Once he had started,
01:17:10nothing could stop him.
01:17:12He made a thousand jokes,
01:17:14laughed like a madman,
01:17:16gave me the palette,
01:17:17took it back again,
01:17:18and finally by five
01:17:20in the evening,
01:17:20he had made the prettiest
01:17:21caricature possible.
01:17:25People were waiting
01:17:26to take it away.
01:17:27My only hope
01:17:28is to be rejected.
01:17:31Bert.
01:17:33Morisot was devastated.
01:17:36First of all,
01:17:36she worried that the picture
01:17:37was no longer really hers.
01:17:39But then also,
01:17:41that concern
01:17:43just exacerbated
01:17:44the one she'd had before,
01:17:45which is that she thought
01:17:46it wasn't a good enough picture
01:17:47to go to the salon.
01:17:49And she wrote to her mother,
01:17:51I'd rather be
01:17:52at the bottom of a river
01:17:53than have that picture shown.
01:17:56But Morisot
01:17:57soon forgave Manet
01:17:59for touching up her work.
01:18:00To Morisot,
01:18:07Edouard Manet
01:18:08was a lifeline
01:18:09to the art world.
01:18:12At her mother's
01:18:13Tuesday night dinners,
01:18:15Morisot was able
01:18:16to get updates
01:18:16on the conversations
01:18:17that took place
01:18:19at the Café Guerbois.
01:18:22Conversations that she,
01:18:23as a proper upper-class woman,
01:18:25was unable to join.
01:18:26One of the things
01:18:29that's very difficult
01:18:30to understand
01:18:31about Morisot
01:18:32is how she could
01:18:33keep a pace
01:18:35with these young men
01:18:36who were having
01:18:37these lively discussions
01:18:39in the Cafés.
01:18:41And so we have to believe
01:18:42that at these
01:18:44family dinner parties,
01:18:46Morisot was,
01:18:47if not showing her pictures
01:18:49to her new friends
01:18:51or looking at their pictures,
01:18:53that at least
01:18:54they were talking
01:18:55about painting
01:18:56and painting theory.
01:18:58And I always imagine
01:18:59this scene where
01:19:00to the left and to the right
01:19:02people are talking about
01:19:03the weather,
01:19:04the latest play,
01:19:05and meanwhile,
01:19:06unbeknownst
01:19:07to everyone at the table,
01:19:09Impressionism
01:19:10is happening right there.
01:19:20But Impressionism
01:19:21was suddenly put on hold.
01:19:25On July 19th, 1870,
01:19:28the Emperor of France,
01:19:30Napoleon III,
01:19:31declared war on Prussia.
01:19:36And all of France
01:19:38was thrown into turmoil.
01:19:39Frederick Basile
01:19:52was one of the first
01:20:07to answer the nationwide call
01:20:09to arms.
01:20:11He could easily
01:20:12have bought himself
01:20:13out of service,
01:20:14but instead,
01:20:15he joined the infantry.
01:20:19As soon as Renoir
01:20:20learned that Basile
01:20:21enlisted,
01:20:22he fired off
01:20:23a one-line note.
01:20:25Triple shit,
01:20:26he wrote.
01:20:27You are a stark,
01:20:28raving bastard.
01:20:35Basile was sent
01:20:36to Algeria
01:20:36to Algeria
01:20:37for combat training.
01:20:38But he seemed
01:20:39to think more about art
01:20:41than war.
01:20:44Dearest mother,
01:20:46I wouldn't be at all
01:20:47disappointed
01:20:47at seeing a real Arab village.
01:20:51I haven't seen
01:20:52a single palm tree.
01:20:54The Arabs are all
01:20:56poor and filthy.
01:20:58However,
01:20:58there's plenty here
01:20:59that would make
01:21:00for really lovely paintings.
01:21:02Frederick.
01:21:10On September 2nd,
01:21:12in a battle
01:21:12on the Prussian border,
01:21:14the French army
01:21:14was routed.
01:21:17Emperor Napoleon III
01:21:18was forced
01:21:19to surrender.
01:21:21Napoleon
01:21:21had completely
01:21:23underestimated
01:21:23the strength
01:21:24of the Prussian army.
01:21:32In Paris,
01:21:33a new government
01:21:34quickly formed
01:21:34and sent out
01:21:36a call
01:21:37for all able-bodied men
01:21:38to join
01:21:39the National Guard.
01:21:43The Prussians
01:21:44were marching
01:21:45toward Paris.
01:21:50Monet,
01:21:51not interested
01:21:52in putting himself
01:21:53at risk
01:21:54for Napoleon's folly,
01:21:56got on a boat
01:21:56at Le Havre
01:21:57and fled to London.
01:22:00His wife and son
01:22:02would soon follow.
01:22:05Degas and Manet
01:22:06enlisted.
01:22:08They were both
01:22:08assigned to serve
01:22:09in the Artillery Corps.
01:22:15Renoir was drafted
01:22:16and posted
01:22:17to a regiment
01:22:17of cuirassiers,
01:22:19the Armored Cavalry.
01:22:22Pissarro and his family
01:22:27were forced
01:22:27to abandon
01:22:28their home
01:22:29to escape
01:22:29the oncoming
01:22:30Prussian troops.
01:22:34They fled
01:22:35to a friend's
01:22:35country house,
01:22:36then made their way
01:22:37on to London
01:22:38to wait out
01:22:39the remainder
01:22:40of the war.
01:22:40Basile finished
01:22:51his training
01:22:52in Algeria
01:22:52and by late fall
01:22:54he joined
01:22:55an infantry regiment
01:22:56near Fontainebleau
01:22:57Forest.
01:22:59He wrote
01:23:00to his parents
01:23:00trying to calm
01:23:01their fears.
01:23:04I am sure
01:23:05not to get killed,
01:23:06he said.
01:23:06I have too many
01:23:07things to do
01:23:08in this life.
01:23:09Within days
01:23:14of sending
01:23:15the letter
01:23:15Basile's regiment
01:23:17was caught
01:23:17by the advancing
01:23:18Prussians
01:23:18and he found
01:23:20himself in the midst
01:23:21of his first battle.
01:23:28It would be
01:23:29his last.
01:23:33Two bullets
01:23:34ripped through
01:23:34his stomach
01:23:35and on November
01:23:3628th, 1870
01:23:38Frederick Basile
01:23:39died.
01:23:44He was just
01:23:4529 years old.
01:23:52The fighting
01:23:53was later described
01:23:54as a minor skirmish.
01:23:57It had no impact
01:23:58on the outcome
01:23:59of the war.
01:24:00The war
01:24:00was a minor skirmish.
01:24:05Basile's father
01:24:06spent eight days
01:24:07searching the battlefield
01:24:08for his dead son.
01:24:12Finally,
01:24:13he found him
01:24:13in an unmarked grave
01:24:15and brought him
01:24:16home for a proper
01:24:17burial in Montpellier.
01:24:22When the news
01:24:23reached artists
01:24:24like Monet
01:24:25and Renoir
01:24:26who were good friends
01:24:27of Basile's
01:24:28that he had died,
01:24:30it was a moment
01:24:32of great sadness.
01:24:32He was one
01:24:34of their best friends.
01:24:39He was
01:24:40clearly someone
01:24:41that they had hoped
01:24:42to go forward with
01:24:44after the Franco-Prussian
01:24:46war.
01:24:47He was part
01:24:47of the inner circle.
01:24:48He was a driving force
01:24:49in the Impressionist movement,
01:24:52a quiet
01:24:53but driving force.
01:24:55And he was
01:24:56suddenly gone.
01:24:56The Prussians
01:24:58surrounded Paris.
01:24:59The Prussians
01:25:00surrounded Paris.
01:25:01and cut off supplies
01:25:03of firewood
01:25:14and food
01:25:15to the entire city.
01:25:16January, 1871.
01:25:23The Prussians
01:25:25surrounded Paris
01:25:26and cut off supplies
01:25:28of firewood
01:25:28and food
01:25:29to the entire city.
01:25:30January, 1871.
01:25:38My dear Edma,
01:25:39we celebrated
01:25:40the birth of the new year
01:25:42in sadness and tears.
01:25:44The bombardment
01:25:45never stops.
01:25:46It is a sound
01:25:48that reverberates
01:25:49in your head
01:25:50night and day.
01:25:52What suffering,
01:25:54what dire need.
01:25:56It is heart-rending.
01:25:57Bert's health
01:25:59is visibly affected.
01:26:02With all my love,
01:26:03your mother.
01:26:10On January 28, 1871,
01:26:13France surrendered
01:26:14to Prussia,
01:26:16giving up
01:26:16Alsace-Lorraine
01:26:17and paying
01:26:18heavy reparations.
01:26:21But peace
01:26:22was not to last.
01:26:27Civil war broke out
01:26:29in early April.
01:26:31The backers
01:26:32of a left-wing
01:26:33Paris government
01:26:34called the Paris Commune
01:26:36fought street-to-street battles
01:26:38with the national government
01:26:39for control of the city.
01:26:43Before the civil war
01:26:44ended late in May,
01:26:46tens of thousands
01:26:47of Parisians
01:26:47were killed,
01:26:49many of them
01:26:50over a few days
01:26:51that came to be known
01:26:52as the Semaine Sanglante,
01:26:55the Bloody Week.
01:26:57Many people
01:26:58were shot
01:27:00very summarily.
01:27:02Many people
01:27:03were exiled.
01:27:04Manet and Degas,
01:27:06according to
01:27:07Bette-Mauriceau's mother,
01:27:09went through Paris
01:27:11at this time
01:27:12thinking,
01:27:13this is the most
01:27:14terrible thing.
01:27:15Manet even
01:27:16drew a picture
01:27:18of one of these
01:27:19summary executions.
01:27:21The sunny, vibrant,
01:27:35modern world
01:27:36that had been laid
01:27:37onto canvas
01:27:37by a handful
01:27:38of young artists
01:27:39seemed lost
01:27:41to cold
01:27:42and darkness
01:27:43and desperation.
01:27:44But out of the darkness
01:27:50would arise
01:27:51a new France
01:27:52and a new sense
01:27:54of opportunity.
01:27:58The small group
01:28:00of Impressionist painters
01:28:01felt the time
01:28:02was right
01:28:03to take on
01:28:04the French art establishment
01:28:05and to challenge
01:28:08the conservative
01:28:08art critics.
01:28:09their fight
01:28:12was to make art
01:28:13on their own terms.
01:28:17To create art
01:28:18that captured
01:28:19the modern moment.
01:28:22To not only survive,
01:28:25but to succeed
01:28:26and to triumph.
01:28:29the modern moment.
01:28:29To be continued...
01:28:30To be continued...
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