The Footsteps of the Impressionists

Figure 1: Gustave Caillebotte, Self-Portrait, 1888. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

Like Bazille, Gustave Caillebotte (Figure 1) and Auguste Renoir (Figure 2) served in the army during the Franco-Prussian War. Caillebotte enlisted in the Garde Mobile—a mobilized, paid element of the greater National Guard of Paris that consisted of unemployed Parisian youths aged sixteen to thirty—from July 1870 to March 1871.[1] During those nine months, he witnessed first-hand the Prussian Siege and experienced the harsh winter, famine, and intrepid isolation aside other Parisians. Renoir was drafted into a cavalry regiment. He served outside of Paris: he was first assigned to Bordeaux and then sent to Tarbes.[2] However, he returned to Paris in March 1871 and was present through the duration of the Commune.

Figure 2: Auguste Renoir, Self-Portrait, 1875. Oil on canvas, 39.1 x 31.6 cm. Clark Institute of Art, Williamstown, MA.

Figure 3: Henri Fantin-Latour, Édouard Manet, 1867. Oil on canvas, 117.5 × 90 cm. Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Figure 4: Edgar Degas, Self-Portrait, 1855. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 40.6 x 34.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Figure 5: Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, 1888. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection.

Édouard Manet (Figure 3), Edgar Degas (Figure 4), and Alfred Sisley (Figure 5) remained in Paris through the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. Because of their age, Manet and Degas were not conscripted into military service during the war; however, they both later volunteered for the National Guard throughout the course of the Siege of Paris. In that capacity, they would have worked closely with the working-class members of the battalions which, Boime postulates, “probably predisposed them to sympathize with the Commune organized in large measure around the National Guard.”[3] As a patriotic National Guardsman, Manet grappled with a new job and carried out new activities, all while depicting the despair his fellow Parisians suffered throughout the Siege and the Commune in his art. The artist’s prints including Civil War (1871; Figure 6) and The Barricade (1871; Figure 7) record the brutality of the Commune and explicitly exemplify Manet’s own political stance on the massacre. Sisley, born and raised in France, retained British citizenship, and was not conscripted during the war.[4] Still, he stayed in Paris throughout the war and the Commune. While in Paris, Sisley lost possessions and artworks at the hands of the Prussians as they pillaged his rental home in Bougival.[5] The impact of the events of 1870-71 on the artist’s career is exemplified by the absence of works produced from this time to 1872.[6]

Camille Pissarro (Figure 8), Claude Monet (Figure 9), and Paul Cezanne (Figure 10) experienced the events of 1870-71 from afar. Pissarro awaited the outcome of the Franco-Prussian war in England and at the time, he had no desire to fight. The artist did not take up full-time residency in Paris until 1855, thus his relationship to France differed from those of his fellow Impressionists. In addition, his wife Julie was pregnant, and the Prussian advance forced them to flee to a friend’s farm in Brittany, leaving behind most of their belongings, including up to 1,500 of the artist’s paintings. [7] Yet, when the Prussians completed the encirclement of Paris in September, threatening the Republic established two weeks earlier, Pissarro felt the need to enlist in defense. [8] However, the death of his two-week-old child stopped him from doing so and prompted the artist to reunite with the rest of his family in England. [9] While in England, the Prussians ransacked Pissarro’s home in Louvecinnes and occupied the ground floor while soldiers stayed in the quarters above.[10] During their time in the home, the Prussians destroyed hundreds of paintings leaving only forty canvases untouched.[11] Similarly to Sisley, there is a hole in the artist’s career which reflects the destruction of Pissarro’s work.[12]

Monet, like Pissarro, had gone to England to avoid the war and Commune. However, his concern for the decline of his country is prevalent in a series of letters. In a note to Pissarro, Monet stated, “what shameful conduct, that of Versailles, it is frightful and makes me ill. I don’t have a heart for anything. It’s all heartbreaking.”[13] Exemplified by his letters and further demonstrated by his visit to see Courbet once he returned to Paris, Monet sympathized with Courbet’s position and condemned the vengeful reaction of the Versailles. [14] In contrast to his fellow members, Cézanne’s response to the war and Commune was to go into hiding.[15]

Figure 6: Édouard Manet, Guerre Civile, scène de la Commune de Paris, 1871 (Civil War), 1871. Lithograph on chine collé mounted on heavy wove paper. Image: 400 mm x 510. Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University.

Figure 7: Édouard Manet, The Barricade, 1871, printed 1884. Lithograph on cream chine collé on white wove paper, 63.7 x 55.4 cm. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Figure 8: Camille Pissarro, Self-Portrait, 1873. 55 x 46 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Figure 9: Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, 1872. Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Figure 10: Paul Cézanne, Self-portrait in a Soft Hat, 1894. Oil on canvas, 60 x 49 cm. Artizon Museum, Tokyo, Japan.