Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999

[p. 112]

fig. 1
Gustave Caillebotte, Déjeuner, 1876, Paris, private collection

[p. 113]

‘Such absurdity can never deserve the name of Art’: impressionism in the Netherlands
Benno Tempel

In the Museum Mesdag in The Hague paintings from the French Barbizon School and the Dutch Hague School hang in fraternal fashion side by side. When Hendrik Willem Mesdag donated his collection to the State of the Netherlands in 1903, it was certainly the most up-to-date assemblage of its kind in the country. It was praised not only for its modernity, but also for the quality of its contents: ‘Millet in all his manifestations, Rousseau and Daubigny are the household gods; all the art displayed both here and in Mesdag's museum is almost entirely a paean of praise to the new movement, a plea for impressionism, for a broad and powerful conception.’¹ Visitors today are still struck by the wealth of the collection, but are scarcely likely to describe the paintings as impressionist. From the earliest days of its use in the Netherlands in the last quarter of the 19th century the term ‘impressionism’ elicited remarkable reactions. This article, based on the art criticism of the period, will examine what precisely was understood by this controversial term.² It has already been argued that there were no Dutch impressionists.³ Indeed, it has been stated that the movement left no mark at all on the Low Countries.⁴ Thus, before examining the term itself, I shall first consider the reception given here to the French painters who allied themselves with this style.

1 Johan Gram, ‘Het Museum Mesdag,’ Haagsche Stemmen 39 (1889), pp. 477-78; cited in Saskia de Bodt, ‘If unfinished paintings become commonplace,’ in Fred Leeman and Hanna Pennock, Museum Mesdag: catalogue of paintings and drawings, Amsterdam 1996, pp. 51-52: ‘Millet, in al zijne uitingen, Rousseau en Daubigny zijn de huisgoden: de kunst, die zoo hier als in Mesdag's museum prijkt, is bijna uitsluitend eene lofrede op de nieuwe richting, een pleidooi voor het impressionisme, voor een breede, krachtige opvatting.’

2 There is a very large body of criticism which discusses impressionism, but I shall restrict myself here to examples that illustrate how the term was used. It is not my intention to present an exhaustive study of the subject of impressionism in Dutch art criticism.

3 See Ronald de Leeuw, ‘Introduction,’ exhib. cat. The Hague School: Dutch masters of the 19th Century, Paris (Grand Palais), London (Royal Academy of Arts) & The Hague (Haags Gemeentemuseum) 1983, p. 35.

4 John Sillevis, ‘Post-impressionisme,’ exhib. cat. Een feest van kleur: post-impressionisten uit particulier bezit, 's-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1990, p. 13.

The French impressionists and their exhibitions: Dutch reactions

In 1874 a group of French artists joined together to present themselves to the public under the name ‘Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc.’ Their reasons for combining forces were partly dissatisfaction with the annual Paris Salon. However, it was not only a general desire to exhibit that prompted their action; they also wanted to see a more balanced selection of work displayed, together with a more spacious method of hanging. In what was later to become known as the first impressionist exhibition, 30 artists showed a total of 165 paintings. In comparison, that same year there were 3,657 entries on view at the Salon. Unfortunately the new group failed to sell many of their works - which had been a major reason for organising the show in the first place - and the Société was soon disbanded. Nonetheless, its founders re-grouped, and seven more exhibitions followed.⁵ From 1877 on, those taking part referred to themselves as ‘impressionistes,’ a name coined by the critic Louis Leroy in an article published in Le Charivari on 25 April 1874, after seeing Monet's Impression: soleil levant (1872, Paris, Musée Marmottan).⁶

5 For the impressionist exhibitions see exhib. cat. The new painting: impressionism 1874-1886, Washington (National Gallery of Art) & San Francisco (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) 1986.

6 On the history of the term ‘impressionism’ in France see Stephen F. Eisenman, ‘The intransigent artist or how the impressionists got their name,’ in ibid., pp. 51-60.

[p. 114]

Beginning in the 1870s, a number of reviews appeared in the Netherlands dealing with the impressionist exhibitions. Paris was the cultural capital of Europe, and both artists and critics sought inspiration there.⁷ However, a closer examination of the criticism reveals that Dutch writers often failed to do justice to the movement.

One of the earliest references to the impressionist exhibitions was made by Marcellus Emants, a Dutch literary figure who occasionally reviewed exhibitions in the 1870s. When discussing the new artistic approaches of the Hague School he was moderately liberal, but when it came to impressionism his conservative attitudes prevailed. Emants wrote about the second exhibition (1876), and he was far from enthusiastic. ‘I would find it hard to give a name to what I saw hanging there. Most of the things are certainly not paintings, unless one chooses to call a few splodges of colour a painting. And they are certainly not drawings, for one thing it is even harder to discern a proper line in them than in the channels dug by children in the sand on a Dutch beach after the waves have washed over them [...]’⁸ The critic compared Caillebotte's Déjeuner (fig. 1) to ‘Chinese’ principles of perspective, an interesting - if mistaken - comparison. We may assume he was actually referring to Japanese prints, which, as is well known, had a great influence on the impressionists.

Many characteristic aspects of impressionism are examined in this short article, entitled ‘De “Salon des Refusés” te Parijs.’ As well as perspective, the critic discusses the way in which shapes have been made indistinct, the representation of contingent impressions, and the use of strong complementary colour. In reference to the latter he wrote: ‘Mr Monet paints fiery red and sky-blue ships with brilliant yellow masts, trees that are blue-green, yellow houses and chrome-coloured duckweed on ultramarine water.’⁹ This bothered Emants because, as he saw it, it was a travesty of reality: ‘If perspective does not stand on its head, if trees are not given a blue, green or mauve wash, if our descendants [...] do not paint and whitewash all natural objects, then we may assuredly predict that such absurdity can never deserve the name of Art.’¹⁰ Emants clinched his arguments with a popular cliché: ‘It is the work of madmen; for even children would not invent such insanity.’ In conclusion he outlined en passant the artists' intentions: ‘They have an unbounded admiration for impromptu impressions [...] but merely reproducing these impressions of nature faithfully on canvas does not mean they have made works of art.’¹¹ Although Emants's objections resemble those of the conservative French critics, he based his opinions on his own observations. In this he was exceptional among Dutch art critics.

Two reports on the impressionist exhibitions of 1876 and 1877 reveal much about the Dutch understanding of the subject. They were published in the Nederlandsche Kunstbode, an art magazine, and their tone was decidedly negative. It is worth noting that the anonymous reporter in 1876 refers to a ‘new sect which has developed in the art world and which is known as le groupe des impressionistes’; in fact, the artists themselves only began using this name a year later. The critic was particularly scathing when it came to the unfinished appearance of the works on view at the art dealer Durand-Ruel's: ‘It strikes me that these gentlemen expect a great deal from the viewer, for it is very difficult to detect whether the

7 See Saskia de Bodt, Halverwege Parijs: Willem Roelofs en de Nederlandse schilderskolonie in Brussel, 1840-1890, Ghent 1995, p. 23.

8 Marcellus Emants, ‘De “Salon des Refusés” te Parijs,’ Nederlandsche Kunstbode (25 May 1876), p. 75: ‘Wat eigenlijk de naam der dingen is die hier bijeenhangen, weet ik niet te zeggen; schilderijen zijn 't voor 't meerendeel in 't geheel niet, wanneer men ten minste eenige kladden verf niet aanstonds tot een schilderstuk wil verheffen. Teekeningen zijn 't evenmin; want de sporen van juiste lijnen zijn er moeilijker in te ontdekken dan de kanalen, door de jeugd in 't Scheveningsche strand gegraven, wanneer er een flinke golf over heen is gespoeld.’ This article is based on a letter to the editor of Het Vaderland, published on 22 April 1876, written in response to an anonymous correspondent from the French capital published in the same paper on 11 April. On Emants's ideas about art in general, see Nop Maas, Marcellus Emants' opvattingen over kunst en leven in de periode 1869-1877 (diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1988).

9 Emants, op. cit. (note 8), p. 75: ‘Mijnheer Monet schildert vuurroode en hemelsblauwe schepen met hooggele masten, blauwgroene boomen, gele huizen en chromaatkleurig kroost op ultramarijn-water.’

10 Ibid., p. 76: ‘[...] indien de perspectief niet op haar kop gaat staan, indien de boomen niet met een blauw, groen of paarsch sop overgoten worden, indien onze nakomelingen niet à l'instar onzer voorvaderen de geheele natuur gaan verven en witten, dan is 't met zekerheid te voorspellen, dat deze dwaasheid nimmer den naam van kunst zal kunnen verdienen.’

11 Ibid.: ‘[...] een onbegrensde vereering van plotselinge indrukken [...] maar als men dergelijke impressies van de natuur getrouw op een doek neerkladt, worden 't daarom nog geen kunstwerken.’

[p. 115]

painter wishes to represent animals, trees, people, or whatever. Indeed, that is not their intention; they wish to offer the opportunity to fantasise, to embellish, to create what one will.’ ‘Not surprisingly, of course, this will find an appreciative audience,’ he wrote, ‘for it is an easy life when you are not required to know very much or to be particularly skilled.’¹²

Such articles were clearly based on information in the French press, as was freely admitted in the review of the 1877 exhibition, which the writer in question had not actually seen. ‘Nature [...] seems to fill these impressionists with melancholy, and - if we are to believe what we hear and read on the subject - it must be amusing, or rather pathetic, to see the products of this so-called art,’ the reviewer remarked cuttingly.¹³ As for the aims of the impressionists, little more was said than that they wanted to give an impression, something ‘all artists want to do.’

Although it is somewhat hard to understand, it is not at all surprising that critics formed their opinions without ever having seen the works in question. Obviously, it is well nigh impossible to avoid blunders under such circumstances. How surrealistic these misconceptions could sometimes be can be seen in an article by J. Zürcher, who at a fairly early date had made positive remarks in the Dutch daily Nieuws van den Dag about the Hague School, thus defining himself as a more progressive voice within Dutch art criticism. He reviewed the 1882 impressionist show. The major artists represented were, he said, ‘Caillebotte, Gauguin, Guillaumin, Pastels [sic], Monet, Mme Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Vignon.’ We must assume that Zürcher did not actually see the exhibition and constructed his review from reports and the catalogue,

fig. 2
Page from Catalogue de la 2ème exposition des Artistes Indépendants, Paris 1882

which explains why he mistook the pastels by Guillaumin for an artist's name (fig. 2). He seems to have been particularly impressed by stories about how the pictures were hung, for he recounts: ‘Their works are usually shown in white frames.’ Although Zürcher classified both the Barbizon School painters, whom he admired, and the Hague School artists, as impressionists, for him the French ‘indépendants’ were a diseased excrescence. He was especially incensed by the fact that they used pure, unmixed colour.¹⁴

12 Anon., ‘Uit Parijs,’ Nederlandsche Kunstbode (10 June 1876), p. 81: ‘Het komt mij evenwel voor, dat deze heeren wel wat veel vergen van dien toeschouwer; want het is bijkans niet te zien, of de schilder beesten, boomen, menschen, of wat dan ook, heeft willen voorstellen. Dit verlangen ze echter ook niet; ze willen de gelegenheid geven er bij te droomen, op te brodeeren, er van te maken, wat men verlangt. Natuurlijk zal deze manier veel aanhangers vinden, want het is zeer gemakkelijk, wanneer men niet behoeft te weten en weinig te kunnen.’

13 Anon., ‘Impressionisten,’ Nederlandsche Kunstbode (10 May 1877), p. 71: ‘De natuur schijnt echter op die impressionisten een ongelukkigen indruk te maken, daar naar 't geen men daarvan hoort en leest, het allerkoddigst of liever bedroevend moet zijn, de voortbrengselen van die zoogenaamde kunst te zien.’

14 J. Zürcher, ‘Impressionisten - Artistes Indépendants,’ De Amsterdammer (1 April 1883).

[p. 116]

The few eye-witness accounts of the Paris art world that appeared in the Dutch press were chiefly written by foreign correspondents. A passage about artistic events was occasionally slotted between items of a political nature. Needless to say, these journalists could not be expected to produce professional judgments on art.¹⁵

In 1879 an article in the Dutch daily Algemeen Handelsblad refers to the fourth exhibition: ‘A good 15 years ago a collection of bright lads, convinced of the fact that a cleverly presented paradox could measure up to solid studies, conceived the idea of creating a mini-revolution in the world of painting. The studio closed its doors, the model was dismissed, and in the nearest coffee house the famous theories were developed between two glasses of beer - among them impressionism, which sprang fully armed and ready for battle, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.’ It seems that here the anonymous correspondent mistook the 1863 Salon des Refusés as the dawn of impressionism. He continued his ironic commentary: ‘The buyers immediately rebelled against these new whims. Even though it was explained to them that all the painters of history - from Raphael to Rembrandt and from Velazquez to Mr Ingres - were no more than a club of naughty schoolboys; [and] that only a realistic painting has the inestimable advantage that one can hang it up any which way, without it making the slightest difference to one's appreciation of the subject. Nevertheless, the bourgeois folk, as they are slightingly termed, could not be converted to this new way of thinking. The impressionist paintings remained unsold, and the shopkeepers dealing in paint and picture frames began to refuse credit. So, in order to improve the state of affairs, this year our painters changed their

fig. 3
‘Chez MM. les peintres indépendants, par Draner,’ from Le Charivari (23 April 1879)

name to indépendants. Independent of whom? Independent of what? I don't know; certainly not independent of the public because they present their work to be assessed; presumably independent of each other.’¹⁶

15 These writers should not be confused with the real critics, who mainly dealt with topics related to art, although they, too, generally wrote on a variety of disciplines. The critic J.J. van Santen Kolff, for example, wrote about art, music and literature, while A.C. Loffelt reviewed not only exhibitions but also theatre productions.

16 Anon., ‘Frankrijk: Het leven te Parijs,’ Algemeen Handelsblad (21 April 1879): ‘Weldra 15 jaren geleden vatte een bent snuggere jongens, vast overtuigd, dat een handig uiteengezette paradox zich met degelijke studie kan meten, het plan op, een omwenteling in de schilderkunst teweeg te brengen. De werkplaats werd verlaten, het model weggezonden, terwijl men in het koffiehuis, tusschen twee glazen bier, de befaamde theorieën ontwierp, waaruit het Impressionisme, geheel gewapend en gereed tot den krijg, te voorschijn trad, als Minerva uit het brein van Jupiter. [...] De koopers kwamen aanstonds tegen den grillen op. Ofschoon hen werd uitgelegd, dat van Raphael tot Rembrandt, van Velasquez tot den heer Ingres, alle schilders van alle tijden en alle landen, slechts een hoop kwajongens zijn; schoon een realistisch schilderstuk bovendien het onschatbare voordeel heeft op alle wijzen te kunnen worden opgehangen, zonder dat dit voor het beoordeelen van hetgeen het werk moet voorstellen eenig verschil geeft; zijn de “bourgeois,” zooals men hen minachtend noemt, nog niet tot betere gevoelens bekeerd. De impressionnistische schilderij blijft in handen van de schilders, terwijl de handelaars in verf en inlijsten krediet beginnen te weigeren. Zeker om den slechten indruk weg te nemen, zijn onze schilders dan ook dit jaar van naam veranderd en indépendants geworden. Onafhankelijk van wie? onafhankelijk waarvan? - Ik weet het niet; niet onafhankelijk van het publiek, omdat zij hun werken aan zijn oordeel onderwerpen; waarschijnlijk onafhankelijk van elkander.’

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The correspondent went on to say more about the exhibition: ‘It is impossible to find anything more absurd, extraordinary or outrageous,’ he wrote. He painted a horrifying picture for the reader. As he saw it, visiting the show was like being let loose in a lunatic asylum. This feeling was generated by the ‘restlessness [...] of that hovering paintbrush, of the inappropriate colours, the absence of shape.’ And indeed, the description he gives of Caillebotte's Une vache et une chèvre (present location unknown) suggests it resembled a pickled foetus: ‘calves whose snouts measure 80 centimetres, which would draw the gaping crowds at a Dutch fair’ (fig. 3).

In 1879 there also appeared a brief eye-witness account in the Dutch daily Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant. Although the article was also generally negative, the author did try to clarify the aims of the artists to some extent: ‘The theory of the impressionists, as far as this may be called a theory, is quite simply that they attempt to represent objects and people in a non-idealised manner, as they are in reality. This theory may or may not be valid from an aesthetic point of view, yet it need not prevent an impressionist from producing a beautiful and great work.

Unfortunately, the high priests of this new religion are not among the most gifted of contemporary painters, and the majority of works on view at this year's exhibition could better have stayed at home.’¹⁷ In particular the journalist criticised the handling of paint, stating that the colour was ‘flung’ onto the canvas in a ‘violent, uncontrolled and slapdash’ manner. The indefinite shapes which resulted created confusion in the viewer's mind - it was no longer clear whether the picture represented a ‘woman or a rose bush.’ However, a few works were ‘undeniably worth looking at’ - in particular The garden (St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum) and the two beach scenes by Monet; a landscape by Rouart; and a coastal view by Tillot (present locations unknown).

Overall, the impressionist exhibitions in France attracted little attention in the Dutch press.¹⁸ The reports which appeared were often based on French articles¹⁹ or were sent from Paris by general correspondents. There were very few Dutch who had actually seen the works in question, and those who had were often confused by them. This is demonstrated by the letters Andries Bonger wrote home in the early 1880s. In a letter to his parents he reported in detail on the outcry among the public and critics caused by the impressionist painters. He then went on to discuss the exhibitions. The young man's first reaction was fairly positive, particularly with regard to Pissarro's landscapes. But he did not report seeing anything with real backbone. His remarks about the pictures by Raffaëlli and on Eugène Vidal's portrait of George Sand reveal that he chiefly felt attracted to the more anecdotal tableaux.²⁰ It scarcely comes as a surprise, then, that Bonger failed to appreciate the paintings shown the following year (1881): ‘I had scarcely seen one or two paintings before I began to feel so unwell that I hurried home as quickly as possible. [...] The painters [have become] ridiculous, crazy even. The most indescribable hues of blue and green are used, which cannot be fitted into any category.’²¹ Interestingly, Bonger, a friend of Theo van Gogh's, was later to collect a large number of works by modern French artists such as Cézanne, Redon, Bernard and Vincent van Gogh.

17 Anon., ‘Frankrijk,’ Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (11 April 1879): ‘De theorie der impressionisten, voor zoover men het theorie noemen kan, is eenvoudig deze, dat zij de dingen en de personen trachten weer te geven, niet geïdealiseerd, maar werkelijk zooals zij ze zien. Deze theorie moge uit een aesthetisch oogpunt juist of valsch zijn, zij zou niet behoeven te beletten, dat een impressionist een schoon en groot kunstwerk voortbracht. Ongelukkig behooren echter de priesters van het nieuwe geloof niet onder de eersten der hedendaagsche schilders, zoodat het meerendeel der stukken, die de independenten dit jaar te zien geven, beter thuis ware gebleven.’

18 In newspapers such as the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, Het Vaderland and Algemeen Handelsblad we find no mention of them, apart from those examined below. The same holds true for periodicals such as Nederlandsche Kunstbode, De Nederlandsche Spectator, De Gids, De Nieuwe Gids, De Konstkronijk, Dietsche Warande and De Portefeuille.

19 In the newspaper column ‘Pluksel’ in De Nederlandsche Spectator (10 May 1879) an announcement appeared under the title ‘New name for group of artists,’ taken from Le Charivari of 23 April 1878. In connection with the opening of the ‘so-called “salon des refusés,”’ it noted, the French newspaper had reproduced ‘a series of caricatures [zincographs by Daumier] of some of these paintings by the “peintres independants,” as they like to call themselves [...]. At the centre is a fantastic head representing one such “independent painter” and beneath it the caption reads “exrefusé, ci-devant réaliste, antérieurement impressioniste, intentioniste, luministe, actuellement nihiliste.” The latter appellation is the most appropriate because many of these new-fangled idiocies and eccentricities end up as nothing.’

20 See Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Vincent van Gogh Foundation, family correspondence, Andries Bonger to his parents, Paris, 23 April 1880, letter b 1604/1970. From 2003 the Bonger Collection will form part of the Van Gogh Museum.

21 Ibid., Andries Bonger to Hermina Bonger, Paris, 25 April 1881, letter b 1647/1970: ‘ternauwernood had ik een paar schilderijen aangezien of ik werd zoo onplezierig, dat ik me zoo spoedig mogelijk naar huis begaf. [...] de schilders [vervallen] in het belachelijke, zelfs in het onzinnige. Er komen dan onbeschrijfelijke groenen en blauwe tinten te voorschijn, waaraan men geen mouw passen kan.’

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Impressionism comes to the Netherlands

It was mainly due to Dutch art dealers that the impressionists remained virtually unknown in the Netherlands,²² despite the efforts of Vincent and Theo van Gogh, who tried to introduce their work. Once he had moved to France, Vincent cherished the dream of making impressionism known in Holland. Initially, he was full of hope, as appears from a letter to Theo of 26-28 February 1888. Theo, he believed, ought to be able to sell about 50 paintings to H.G. Tersteeg, the branch manager of Boussod, Valadon & Cie. in The Hague, particularly ‘in view of the low prices in relation to the importance of these works [...] and, after all, he will have to have some in stock, because if people are talking about these paintings in Antwerp and Brussels then it won't be long before they're being discussed in The Hague and Amsterdam’ [581/465]. These ‘50 paintings’ turned out to be the famous shipment of ten that sat in Holland from 6 April to 10 June of that year, before being returned as un-saleable (fig. 4).²³ The batch contained work by Monet, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh (fig. 5).

The failure of this transaction was not only due to a lack of enthusiasm among Dutch collectors. Tersteeg himself had no notion of impressionism and agreed to have the works sent only because Theo persuaded him. However, when the paintings arrived, he was far from appreciative. In reference to a landscape by Sisley he supposedly remarked: ‘The artist who painted that was a little tipsy.’²⁴ But Dutch painters, too, reacted unenthusiastically, as appears from Vincent's letter: he wished that ‘Mesdag and the others [would] stop making the impressionists look ridiculous’ [581/465]. In a letter of circa 22 June he complained to his sister Wil: ‘Theo has sent Mr Tersteeg a shipment of impressionist paintings, including one by me. But the only result seems to have been that neither Tersteeg nor the artists - according to Theo - have got anything out of it. That's quite easy to understand, because it's always the same: people have heard of the impressionists, they have

fig. 4
List of works on view at Boussod, Valadon & Cie. in 1888, The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisch Documentatie (RKD)

great expectations but [...] when they see the work for the first time they feel deeply disappointed and find the pictures shoddy, ugly, badly painted, badly drawn, bad use of colour - everything poorly done and poorly finished. That was my impression, too, when I first arrived in Paris with my head full of the ideas of Mauve and Israëls’ [633/W4].²⁵ Even an artist like Willem Maris, often compared with the impressionists because of his bright palette, was not taken with these ‘luminists,’ whose work he described as ‘faded postage stamps.’²⁶

The Hague adventure was, in short, a disaster. Years later, however, after Theo's death, the influential but reticent critic A.C. Loffelt recalled the impact these works had made on him: ‘If I see pieces by Sisley or Monet,

22 In 1865 Monet had submitted two pre-impressionist works to the Tentoonstelling van Levende Meesters in The Hague, but they attracted no attention. More than a hundred years later the Van Gogh Museum managed to acquire one of them; see Ronald de Leeuw, ‘Inleiding,’ exhib. cat. Langs velden en wegen: De verbeelding van het landschap in de 18de en 19de eeuw, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1998, p. 34 and ‘Catalogue of acquisitions: paintings and drawings, July 1994-December 1996,’ Van Gogh Museum Journal (1996), p. 202.

23 The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), Archief Maison Goupil, inv. no. 40/30-40/47 (Tableaux 186-1917).

24 Quoted in John Rewald, ‘Theo Van Gogh, Goupil and the impressionists (première partie),’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 81 (January 1973), pp. 28-29.

25 At around the same time, 29 May, Vincent also wrote to the Dutch artist A.H. Koning, who was living in France: ‘I assume you've seen the impressionists at Durand-Ruel's? You'll have a lot to tell the folk back in Holland about what you've seen in Paris’ [621/498a].

26 See C. Harms Tiepen, Willem Maris' herinneringen, The Hague 1910, p. 249.

[p. 119]

fig. 5
Vincent van Gogh, The Seine with the Pont de Clichy, 1887 (F 303 JH 1323), Paris, Dr Fausto Capella and New York, William Gelender

I am always reminded of poor Theo van Gogh, who about six years ago showed me an exhibition of their work at Goupil's - the old Pissarro and several moderns. I was not aware of how much he admired this art, and when he asked me what I thought of it, I replied without thinking twice: ‘I suppose Sisley's is the least awful, but I'm very glad that for me nature doesn't appear so monotonous as it does to the others.’ He answered me quite crossly in an offended tone: ‘Well, I am; I'm very glad, that I see nature like that.’²⁷

Meanwhile it had become clear to Vincent and Theo that the Dutch were uninformed about what was happening in France. In a letter to Theo of circa 5 June 1888 Vincent wrote: ‘Do you see now what audacity those idiots in Dordrecht have? [...] They are quite happy to busy themselves with Degas & Pissarro, whose work incidentally they've never seen - just as they've never seen any of the others’ [623/500]. By ‘those idiots in Dordrecht’ Vincent meant the artist Jan Veth, one of the organisers of the Nederlandsche Etsclub (Dutch Etching Society), and his friends. The energetic artists-cum-critics associated with the periodical De Nieuwe Gids - Jan Veth, Willem Witsen and Maurits van der Valk - defended the painters of the Hague School and their younger offspring active in Amsterdam. These men were much talked of at the time, not least because of their virulent attacks on other critics who, in their opinion, were unqualified and ignorant.²⁸ The old Joseph Alberdingk Thijm was particularly slated in the 1880s, the period when these maverick writers were striving for a renewal in Dutch art. Thijm had been professor of Aesthetics at the Amsterdamse Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam National Academy of Visual Arts) since 1879, and he detested such things as the blurring of shapes and supposedly banal subject matter of the Hague and Amsterdam Schools.

Among other things, Veth accused Thijm of not being aware of what was actually taking place in the art world. In addition, the Catholic Thijm felt that a painting should present an uplifting scene or idea, and Veth suspected that he valued this at the cost of technical aspects. However, it seems that the artist-critics of De Nieuwe Gids were themselves unfamiliar with French artists such as Degas, Monet and Renoir. Since Thijm supposedly drew conclusions without knowing the facts, G.H.C. Stemming (i.e. Jan Veth) advised him to read Huysmans's L'art moderne or the ‘little brochure’ by Felix Fénéon. But it appears that Veth himself had done no more than assimilate the writings of these two Frenchmen,²⁹ as is demonstrated by

27 E.G.O. [= A.C. Loffelt], ‘Kunst- en Letternieuws Haagsche Kunstkring,’ Het Vaderland (16 October 1893): ‘Als ik werk van Sisley en Monet zie, denk ik altijd nog aan den rampzaligen Theo Van Gogh, die mij een jaar of zes geleden bij Goupil een tentoonstelling van hen, den ouden Pissarro en nog eenige modernen liet zien. Ik kende zijn ingenomenheid met die kunst niet en toen hij me vroeg, hoe ik die nieuwe kunst vond, antwoordde ik zonder erg: Sisley bevalt mij nog het best, maar ik ben blij, dat ik de natuur niet zoo eentonig zie als die anderen. Meer of minder boos en opgewonden antwoordde hij: “Nu, ik dan wel, ik ben blij, dat ik de natuur zoo zie.”’

28 On the art reviews in De Nieuwe Gids see Carel Blotkamp, ‘Kunstenaars als critici: Kunstkritiek in Nederland 1880-1895,’ exhib. cat. De schilders van Tachtig: Nederlandse schilderkunst 1880-1895, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1991, pp. 75-88.

29 G.H.C. Stemming [= Jan Veth], ‘Prof. Thijm en zijn “exkluzivisma,”’ De Nieuwe Gids 2 (1887), part 2, p. 195.

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the way the Etsclub's second exhibition was organised.³⁰

The society's second annual exhibition, which took place in 1888, included pieces by Degas (a chalk drawing of a dancer, and four lithographs by Thornley after his works), Pissarro and Forain (fig. 6). There were also etchings by artists such as Raffaëlli, who although he took part in their exhibitions, cannot truly be classified as an impressionist. Ironically, now that the Dutch public had the opportunity of seeing impressionist work, this was in the form of graphic art, where the typical characteristics of the style are less apparent. In addition, this show was much less carefully devised than has often been suggested, for the organisers apparently did not know exactly what they wanted to put on display. In a letter to Theo van Gogh, Veth wrote: ‘Couldn't you help out your young compatriots, who always appear to be sitting in an obscure corner? You seem to be right at the heart of things there in France. I read in the May number of the Revue Indépendante that you are showing four lithographs by Thornley after Degas. Now that would be something for us. [...] Maybe there's more of this type of thing. Didn't Degas make some etchings? We don't know the proper channels for finding out such things here. Didn't Raffaëlli ever make any etchings? [...] What about etchings by Pissarro or Brown? [...] Of course, our main concern isn't with the very latest and newest. What we'd like to see is what you consider the best of this type of work.’³¹

Inspired by the exhibition, Veth was to write a positive review of Pissarro's work later the same year, based on

fig. 6
George William Thornely after Edgar Degas, Dancers, c. 1889, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

30 On the Nederlandsche Etsclub see Jeroen Giltay, ‘De Nederlandsche Etsclub (1885-1896),’ Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 27 (1976), pp. 91-125.

31 Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, letter to Theo van Gogh, Dordrecht, 15 May 1888, inv. no. 3573: ‘zou u uw jonge landgenooten die toch altijd een beetje in een achterhoek zitten niet een beetje kunnen helpen? Voor de jonge Fransche kunst zit u geheel aan de bron. Zoo zag ik in de Revue Indépendante van Mei dat u exposeert vier lithografien van Thornley naar Degas. Dat zou bv iets voor ons zijn. [...] In dien geest is er misschien meer. Heeft Degas niet geëtst? Wij weten natuurlijk ganschelijk den weg niet voor zulke zaken. Heeft bv ook Rafaëlli zelf nooit geëtst [...] Heeft u ook soms etsen van Pissaro of van Brown [...] Natuurlijk zijn we niet zoozeer belust op wat nu het 't allernieuwste is. We hadden graag iets van 't beste der richting die u met zooveel oordeel voorstaat.’ In letters 613/489 and 615/490 Vincent refers to an exhibition in Dordrecht in which drawings by Bernard, Gauguin and Van Gogh himself were to be shown. We may assume that there is some confusion here on the artist's part. In his letterhead, Veth gave Dordrecht as his place of residence; this explains why Vincent (and probably Theo, too) assumed the exhibition would be held there. In fact, the second exhibition of the Nederlandsche Etsclub was held in the building of the society Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam; it opened on 1 June 1888.

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the small quantity of post-impressionist pieces that had been on view (fig. 7).³² The conservative critic Alberdingk Thijm was, however, far less jubilant. Referring to the show he wrote: ‘the appalling, childish scribbles of Edgar Degas, the impossible J.L. Forain, the cheap gaudy prints by Lucien Pissarro, the ghostly work by Odilon Redon, the chalk daubs done with the finger by Georges Seurat [...] fill the viewer with such disgust it hardly weighs against the pleasure experienced from seeing the work of now-deceased artists such as Corot, Millet and Lancon.’³³ Another Dutch critic of the same ilk, David van der Kellen, was damning in his opinion of the entries by Pissarro, Forain, Raffaëlli and Degas: ‘Rather no art than this kind of thing,’ he remarked mournfully.³⁴

After the impressionist exhibitions in France were over and the artists had each gone their own way, the Dutch critics gradually became more aware of what the movement was all about.³⁵ In one of the earliest reviews of the work of Vincent van Gogh to appear in the Netherlands, the writer Frederik van Eeden made some remarks about impressionism. Van Eeden was one of the first Dutchmen to admire Van Gogh; unlike Jan Veth, he had no problems with Vincent's painting.³⁶ Despite this, he hesitated when it came to the artist's contemporaries: ‘But in France Van Gogh trained in the school of the independents, where the greatest French artists of the moment are to be found, Degaz [sic], Pissarro, Raffaëlli, Monet. It seems that Van Gogh's work most resembles that of Monet - of whom I

fig. 7
Camille Pissarro, The Place de la République in Rouen, 1883, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - PreuBischer Kulturbesitz

never saw anything important. But I must admit that what I saw by Pissarro, Degaz [sic] and Raffaëlli never gave me the impression of being beautiful. Sometimes I can understand the superior quality of the work without really appreciating what was meant, and sometimes I do not even see that. I would assume it to be the work of children, although I hear on good authority, from those who are better able to

32 See J. Staphorst [= Jan Veth], ‘Impressies,’ De Nieuwe Gids 3 (1888), part 2, pp. 437-39.

33 Alb. Thijm [= J.A. Alberdingk Thijm], ‘Ten-toon-stellingen in Noord- en Zuid-Holland,’ De Amsterdammer (17 June 1888): ‘[...] de vreeselijke, schoolkinderachtige krabbelingen van Edgar Degas, de onmogelijke van J.L. Forain, de kermisprenten van Lucien Pissarro, de spookachtige van Odilon Redon, de met den vinger gedane van Georges Seurat (krijtdommeling), [...] brengen meer walging aan, dan wordt opgewogen door het genot dat de werken van de overledenen als Corot, Millet en Lancon ons bieden.’ Other than this, before 1900, works by impressionist artists appeared only sporadically on the Dutch exhibition circuit. The following overview provides a clear picture. Haagsche Kunstkring, 8 October - 6 November 1893: Alfred Sisley - Port Marly; Canal du Loing; Bords de la Tamise; Claude Monet - Falaises de St Adresse; Bocal de pêches; Vue de Hollande; Argenteuil (effet de neige); Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Paysage; Tête d'enfant; Femme au chapeau; Camille Pissarro - Palais de Justice à Pontoise; Près de l'étang; Femmes au pied d'un noyer; Effet de neige à Montfoucault. Exhibition at the gallery of E.J. van Wisselingh, Amsterdam, 29 January-15 February 1897: Claude Monet - Rivière. E.J. van Wisselingh exhibition at the Rotterdamse Kunstkring, circa 1898: Edgar Degas - In het atelier. Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, exhibition of paintings by the modern French School, 1901: Claude Monet - Les coteaux d'orgemont; La Seine à Vernon; Vue d'Amsterdam; Camille Pissarro - Bazincourt; Paysannes près d'un noyer; Cricket match, Bedford Park; Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Chalet à Pourville; Jeune fille regardant des gravures; Tête de femme; Alfred Sisley - Le chemin des fontaines; Le canal de Loing. E.J. van Wisselingh exhibition at Pulchri Studio, The Hague, 1905: Claude Monet - Le printemps; La falaisse de Saint Adresse. Post-impressionist work by Signac, Seurat and others was exhibited at the Haagsche Kunstkring as early as 1892.

34 D.v.d.K. [= D. van de Keller], ‘Tentoonstelling van Etsen en Teekeningen op de Kunstzaal der Maatschappij “Arti et Amicitiae,”’ Het Nieuws van den Dag (18 June 1888).

35 Just as in the world of art criticism, it was not until the end of the 19th century that impressionist art really became interesting to Dutch collectors. Around 1900 the collector Cornelis Hoogendijk bought several impressionist works from Ambroise Vollard in Paris; see Herbert Henkels, ‘Cézanne en Van Gogh in het Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Kunst in Amsterdam: de collectie van Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911),’ Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 41 (1993), no. 3-4, pp. 155-295. Mesdag, who was chairman of the artists' society Pulchri Studio, the bastion of the Hague School, was keen to exhibit part of the collection following a visit to Hoogendijk's home on the Bezuidenhoutseweg (ibid., p. 167). The board of Pulchri Studio, however, only made a selection from his Dutch Old Masters (ibid., pp. 167-70). According to Henkels, this was because Hoogendijk himself did not yet wish to exhibit any modern French work. This seems highly unlikely since in February 1899 - just one month after the Pulchri exhibition - there was a show at the Haagsche Kunstkring that included French art from his collection (ibid., p. 170). It looks very much as if Pulchri Studio's lack of interest in contemporary work from the collection was due solely to Mesdag's own aversion to impressionism.

36 See Carel Blotkamp, ‘Art criticism in De Nieuwe Gids,’ Simiolus (1971), no. 5, p. 144.

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judge, that it is of high artistic merit.’³⁷ It is not clear how Van Eeden got to see paintings by the impressionists - possibly in Paris or perhaps at Tersteeg's. However it came about, his disapproval is patent.

Among Dutch artists and critics, the arrival of impressionist work in the Netherlands in 1888 gave rise to chiefly negative comments. But on the whole there were mostly variations on the theme of silence, quite unlike the uproar the movement had caused in Paris. In an article published in De Nieuwe Gids in 1890, Veth did express his admiration for Degas,³⁸ but he restricted himself mainly to praising the artist as an etcher. He also described the work of Monet, who he said ‘was chiefly concerned with the effect of light in the landscape, rendering it by means of setting bright invigorating colours beside each other.’³⁹

Otherwise he had little positive to say. It is worth noting that Veth never wrote extensively about the impressionists for the magazine De Kroniek, to which he contributed from the 1890s on, with the exception of some brief remarks in the so-called ‘notes’ section; these were a kind of newsflash item and were frequently taken from other (foreign) magazines or newspapers.⁴⁰

The artist and critic J.J. Isaacson, who lived in Paris from 1887 to 1890, wrote in a positive tone about Monet, Degas and, to a lesser extent, Pissarro in the Dutch periodical De Portefeuille. He was also the first to mention Van Gogh.⁴¹ In a series of articles, Isaacson described the neoimpressionists, among whom he included Monet. Apart from Monet and Pissarro, however, he was unimpressed with this art. It was only worthwhile analysing because one of their number - Monet - was a ‘superior artist’ in whose ‘visions the most delicate brightness of the sun is made visible in a dramatic and understated manner.’⁴² He delineates what can only be described as a mixture of impressionist and pointillist ideas, including the theory of complementary colours, noting that in the paintings by these artists a ‘shadow is never black but blue.’⁴³ He also referred to their technique as ‘stippelen’ or painting with small dots, which made their pictures resemble ‘coloured fields of small peas.’ Isaacson distinguishes two revolutionary groups of painters: the neo-impressionists - including Monet, Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Luce, Gausson, Seurat, Signac and Dubois-Pillet; and the ‘emotional impressionists,’ among them Degas, Bernard, Gauguin, De Lothrijk, Van Gogh, Guillaumin, Cézanne and Redon, as well as the ‘inevitable camp-followers Schuffenecker and Zandomeneghi.’⁴⁴

As Isaacson's articles demonstrate, already in the early 1890s critics were able to provide a reasonably accurate picture of neo-impressionism; their opinion of the impressionists, on the other hand, had hardly changed. A good example is provided by Loffelt's 1891 review of the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Although by then he knew the names of a few of the impressionists, he here classifies them as pointillists. In the same piece he also refers to earlier paintings by Monet and Sisley, which suggests that he even knew their work, probably through the show in The Hague in 1888. And, although his judgment was to become thoroughly negative in 1893, he here appears to at least show some appreciation for the

37 Frederik van Eeden, ‘Vincent van Gogh,’ De Nieuwe Gids 6 (1891), part 1, p. 264: ‘Maar in Frankrijk ging Van Gogh zich vormen in den school der independanten, waaronder thans de grootste Franschen artisten behooren, Degaz, Pissaro, Raffaëlli, Monet. Van Monet, op wiens werk dat van Van Gogh het meest moet gelijken, zag ik nimmer iets belangrijks. Maar ik beken, dat wat ik van Pissaro, Degaz en Raffaëlli zag, mij nimmer den indruk van mooi heeft kunnen geven. Soms zie ik het superieure van het werk, zonder iets van de bedoeling te apprecieeren, soms zie ik ook dat niet, - zoodat ik voor kinderwerk zou houden, wat ik op gezag van anderen die beter kunnen oordeelen, als hoog-artistiek moet aannemen.’ For Van Eeden on Vincent van Gogh see Blotkamp, op. cit. (note 28), p.82.

38 Jan Veth, ‘Fransche Schilderkunst van deze Eeuw,’ De Nieuwe Gids 5 (1890), part 2, pp. 326-27. In 1888 Willem Witsen had also made some appreciative remarks about Degas, although at the same time emphasising the ‘ugly’ aspects of his art: ‘Degas is a keen observer [...] a ballet dancer [...] is striking in her huge realism, an ugly woman with an ugly shape and ugly proportions; that's how it is, that's it’; see Verberchem [= W. Witsen], ‘Tweede jaarlijksche tentoonstelling van de Nederlandsche Etsclub,’ De Nieuwe Gids 3 (1888), part 2, p. 431.

39 Veth, op. cit. (note 38), p. 327.

40 See e.g. JV [= Jan Veth], ‘Notes,’ De Kroniek 1 (27 October 1895), no. 44, p. 347. Here he mentions Monet's paintings of the cathedral at Rouen.

41 J. Hulsker, ‘Zijn naam, Vincent, is voor het nageslacht,’ in idem, Van Gogh in close-up, Amsterdam 1993, pp. 11-12.

42 J.J.I. [= J.J. Isaacson], ‘De revolutionaire schildersgroep in Frankrijk I,’ De Portefeuille (10 May 1890), p. 75.

43 Ibid., p. 76.

44 J.J.I. [= J.J. Isaacson], ‘De revolutionaire schildersgroep in Frankrijk II,’ De Portefeuille (17 May 1890), p. 89.

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early Sisley: ‘It would be alright to see one Sisley, or a Monel, but the monotony, the superficiality of the genre when you see a quantity of them together (Sisley has entered several paintings which are hung side by side) is hard to bear: you have the impression of looking at factory work, like Japanese mother-of-pearl objects. Previously Sisley sought to express himself in a range of yellow and grey tones, full of variety and maturity, which perfectly rendered the sunny French city-, town- and riverscapes.’⁴⁵ Naturally, this exhibition no longer showed impressionism in its original form, and indeed, the critic paid most attention to the neo-impressionist work on display.

45 E.G.O. [= A.C. Loffelt], ‘De beide schilderijen-tentoonstellingen te Parijs IV,’ Het Vaderland (18 July 1891): ‘Een Sisley, éen Monet te zien zou nog gaan, maar het eentonige en sommaire van het genre, als men er eenige naast elkaar beschouwt (Sisley heeft meerdere stukken ingezonden, die naast elkaar hangen), doet onzen smaak onaangenaam aan: men meent fabriekswerk voor zich te zien, Japansche paarlmoerwerkjes bijvoorbeeld. Sisley heeft vroeger in een gamma van gele en grijze tinten zijn kracht gezocht, vol afwisseling en rijpheid, die de zonnige Fransche stads-, dorps- en riviergezichten uitmuntend karakteriseerden.’

Dutch impressionism: a confusing term

Despite the summary references to the revolutionary developments in painting in France and the general rejection of this art, from 1877 on the word ‘impressionism’ may be regularly encountered in Dutch criticism. But there was little understanding of what this term implied. Ironically, it was those very Dutch artists who detested Monet and others whom the Dutch critics classified as impressionists.

The progressive critic J.J. van Santen Kolff is known primarily in Dutch art history as the man who gave the Hague School its name.⁴⁶ Indeed, not only was Kolff the first to use this appellation, he was also the first to describe a Dutch painter as an impressionist.⁴⁷ In 1877 this honour was bestowed on the now-almost-forgotten F.J. Rossum du Chattel, whom he described as ‘indisputably a thorough-going and completely sound impressionist, as this branch of so-called realists is now being called in France.’⁴⁸ At first glance this passage may not seem strange, but when we read Kolff's articles it becomes clear that he had no idea what was actually meant by the term impressionism, and that he equated it wholly with the Hague School. In connection with a review of a watercolour by the Dutch painter Jozef Neuhuys in 1878, for example, he cites a passage from an article by Victor Cherbuliez published in the Revue des Deux Mondes - itself drawn from Théodore Duret's Les peintres impressionnistes [sic] (1878). Speaking of the ‘so-called ‘peintres naturalistes’ or ‘impressionnistes de notre temps’ Kolff quoted: ‘Nous leur devons l'étude du plein air, la sensation vraie non-seulement des couleurs, mais des moindres nuances des couleurs, les tons, et encore la recherche des rapports entre l'état de l'atmosphère qui éclaire le tableau et la lonalité générale des objets, qui s'y trouvent peints.’⁴⁹

This link between impressionism and tonal painting, whereby the weather or an outdoor ‘mood’ is rendered, does indeed seem to relate better to the work of Anton Mauve, Jacob Maris or Jozef Israëls than to that of Monet, Renoir or Pissarro (fig. 8). In fact, the citation used by Kolff bears a striking resemblance to his own description of the art of the Hague School. But even if he did not know Duret's treatise in its entirety, the article by Cherbuliez should have sounded a warning bell. In fact, the passage Kolff quotes is preceded by a sentence referring to ‘la peinture claire, définitivement débrassée de la litharge, du bitume, du chocolat, du jus de chique, du graillon et du gratin.’ And although he himself would never have described the work of the Hague School as ‘dirty chocolate,’ he was certainly

46 On Van Santen Kolff see Benno Tempel, ‘Un chevalier sans peur: De kunstkritieken van J.J. van Santen Kolff 1875-1893,’ unpublished paper, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1996 and idem, ‘De kunst van het recenseren: De kunstkritieken van J.J. van Santen Kolff,’ Jong Holland 14 (1998), no. 1, pp. 32-40.

47 See Blotkamp, op. cit. (note 36), p. 122, fn. 34.

48 J.K. [= J.J. van Santen Kolff], ‘Een nationale vereeniging ter bevordering der waterverfteekenkunst II,’ De Banier 3 (1877), no. 3, p. 463: ‘Hier is du Chattel ontegenzeggelijk een volbloed en uiterst gezond impressionist, zooals tegenwoordig in Frankrijk een secte der zoogenaamde “réalisten” wordt genoemd.’

49 Victor Cherbuliez, ‘La peinture à l'exposition universelle I,’ Revue des Deux Mondes 48 (1878), p. 634; cited in J.J. van Santen Kolff, ‘In der zaal der teekenacademie,’ De Nederlandsche Spectator (1878), no. 35, p. 276.

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fig. 8
Anton Mauve, The marsh, 1885, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

aware that some critics considered it just that. He should therefore have concluded that ‘la peinture claire’ - i.e. impressionism - was the very opposite of the Dutch style. However, he had probably never actually seen any of the exhibitions in Paris, and was basing his remarks on foreign articles; moreover, he wished to present the Hague School as an important international movement. He thus reached the wrong conclusion about the term and the ‘impressionist’ group as a whole.

The Hague School set out to modernise Dutch art, in the process causing quite a lot of controversy. The critics accused these painters of neglecting technique; their works were considered sketchy and unfinished. The movement developed in the 1870s - precisely the same moment that witnessed the birth of impressionism in France. This art, too, was associated with sketchiness, loose brushwork, a lack of precise detail and indistinct shapes. From the comments in the French press Dutch critics thus concluded that

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there were certain similarities between the two styles, and it is therefore not altogether surprising that the word ‘impressionist’ quickly became associated with the work of the Hague School. The Dutch critics tended to focus on these supposedly identical technical aspects, thereby ignoring issues such as the choice of subject matter and use of colour.

This appears in a review by a certain Francesco written in 1890, based on articles by the French critic Albert Wolff: ‘How much greater then is the artistry of the old Dutch masters compared with the painters of today, whom one may place in the group Albert Wolff scathingly called the School of Impotents, l'école des impotents. “The impressionists and their ilk,” is more or less what he says, “have no understanding of painting; they occupy themselves with it without appreciating finish (l'achevé), shape, line and so forth”; these are the people who compose the School of Impotents.’⁵⁰ Loffelt, too, refers to the Hague painters as ‘the so-called impressionist school, which most people understand to be artists who lack the skill to make a complete and finished work.’⁵¹ The conservative critic Thijm also let his voice be heard: ‘There are meanwhile many artists and also prattlers and writers who would like us to believe that modern theory and practice are characterised by the (coincidental) qualities that we observe in many paintings by the impressionists, for example, the blurred outlines, the absence of finished detail, the lack of judgment, or, if you prefer, an unconsidered choice of subject taken from nature.’⁵²

Another contributing factor to this misuse of the term ‘impressionism’ was the frequent appearance of the word ‘impressie,’ used from the 1870s on by Dutch art critics in connection with the Hague School. ‘Impressie’ implies the rendering of a personal impression, a description which seems perfectly suited to the all-prevailing sense of mood found in the work of these artists, which was generally seen as the result of a reproduction of specific types of weather as seen through the artist's eyes. It is therefore not surprising that in the Netherlands the French term ‘impressionism’ soon became confused with the word ‘impressie.’ Thus we find Alberdingk Thijm writing in 1886: ‘At the heart of things [...] the impressionists are right. Their starting point (even though they don't say it openly) is that art is nature, plus the state of mind of the artist.’⁵³ During the 1880s the term ‘impressionism’ cropped up right, left and centre in Dutch art criticism, but it rarely referred to the French art movement. It soon acquired a general meaning.

The tonal, atmospheric effects - impressions of certain kinds of weather - so prevalent in the work of the Hague and Amsterdam School painters resulted in a dissolution of form and the sketchy character that was so often seen as characteristic of impressionist work. Problems arose, however, because, in fact, all painters seek to render ‘an impression.’ Loffelt, for example, described the colourful work of J.H. Weissenbruch and J.J. van de Sande Bakhuijzen, with their well-defined shapes as follows: ‘The blue of the sky [in Van de Sande Bakhuijzen's Landscape in Overijssel] could have more tone and thereby be deeper, but personally I prefer to see a mistake like this, which is caused by the striving after perfection, than the characterless vague shapes and sketchy effects of the so-called impressionists. These artists wish to give an “impression” of nature, but isn't that exactly what Weissenbruch and Van de Sande Bakhuijzen do in their work? The only difference is that they aim for a powerful statement, an active rendering of a mood, while the others seem to prefer a hazy, vague, passive state. If people ask me who has best managed to convey this “impression” in a plastic form, then I would say that Weissenbruch and Bakhuijzen are the winners.’⁵⁴ In a satirical report in the weekly Amsterdammer a certain Fred J. Verheijst wrote, ‘But we have entered a new age. We are overwhelmed by an inexhaustible urge for colour harmony. Tones and yet more tones - that is what we covet. And if these tones flow here and there over the edges of the objects being represented [...], why we won't bother too much. Impressions of nature are renewed and

50 Francesco, ‘De kunst op de Haagsche tentoonstelling II,’ De Amsterdammer (15 June 1890): ‘Hoe stijgt dan de artisticiteit van den oud-Hollandschen schilder tegenover den moderne, die zoo in alle opzich-ten behoort tot de richting, welke Albert Wolff l'école des impotents, de school der onmachtigen gedoopt heeft. “De impressionisten c.s.” zoo heeft hij ongeveer gezegd, “zij die het eigenlijke schilderen niet verstaan, maar die zich met schilderkunst bezig houden, zonder smaak te hebben voor het voltooien (l'achevé), voor den vorm en voor de lijn enz. maken gezamenlijk de school der onmachtigen uit.”’

51 E.G.O. [= A.C. Loffelt], ‘De aquarellen in de Gothische Zaal,’ Het Vaderland (17 August 1882).

52 Alb. Thijm [= J.A. Alberdingk Thijm], ‘Kunst-tent-toonstelling III,’ De Amsterdammer (17 October 1886): ‘Intusschen zijn er vele artiesten en ook praters en schrijvers, die ons willen doen geloven, dat de moderne theorie en praktijk zich kenmerken door de (toevallige) eigenaardigheden, die wij in vele schilderijen der impressionisten opmerken: als bijv. het vlottende der omtrekken, het afzijn van uitvoerigheid in de bewerking, het onoordeelkundige, of, wil men, argloze der keuze van het uit de natuur genomene.’

53 Ibid.: ‘In de grond der zaak [...] hebben de impressionisten gelijk [...]. Hun beginsel is (al spreken zij 't niet uit), dat de kunst is de natuur, plus het gemoed van de kunstenaar.’

54 E.G.O. [= A.C. Loffelt], ‘De Haagsche “Salon,”’ Het Vaderland (13 June 1887): ‘Het blauw der lucht kon toniger en daardoor dieper, maar ik voor mij verkies zulk een fout veroorzaakt door een streven naar volmaaktheid boven de karakterlooze weifelingen en schetsmatigheid van zoogenaamde impressionnisten. Willen zoogenoemden een “indruk”, een “impressie” van de natuur geven; welnu, geven Weissenbruch en Van de Sande Bakhuizen dien niet in hun werk? Het eenige verschil is, dat zij naar een krachtigen indruk zoeken, een actieve natuurstemming, terwijl de anderen zich meer aangetrokken voelen door een druilige, wazige, passieve stemming. Vraagt men mij, wie er het best in geslaagd zijn hun “impressionnisme” weer te geven in een plastischen kunstvorm, dan zijn volgens mijn waarnemingsvermogen, Weissenbruch en Bakhuijzen de baas.’

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fig. 9
Jacobus van Looy, Luxurious summer, 1893, Private collection

such things as objective accuracy in representation become utterly unimportant. [...] But we have acted without considering the Nemesis of neatness and precision. Recently a talented impressionist, not lacking in genius, made a real mess of his landscape.’⁵⁵

Impressionism thus became synonymous with a certain way of painting: it was swift, shapes were indistinct, the brushstroke was loose and rough. Essential aspects such as the use of complementary colour tones and novel means of presentation - type of frame, background colour of the walls, absence of the final varnish layer - all so elaborately debated and applied by French artists, were never mentioned. Even in the 1890s, when Jan Toorop's neo-impressionist work ensured a reasonable picture of this style,

55 Fred. J. Verheijst, ‘Kunst-tent-toon-stellingen: Utrecht, Amsterdam, 's-Gravenhage,’ De Amsterdammer (25 May 1884): ‘Maar wij zijn een ander tijdperk ingetreden. Een onmetelijke behoefte aan kleurenharmonie heeft zich van ons meester gemaakt. Toon en nog eens toon, - ziedaar wat wij begeeren. Of die tonen, hier en daar, over de grenzen der voorgestelde zaken heenvloeyen, of er links en rechts geëmpiëteerd wordt, trekken wij ons minder aan. Natuurimpressies vernieuwen zich bij ons en de objektieve lijnen-juistheid wordt volkomen veronachtzaamheid. [...] Maar men rekent buiten de Nemesis der netheid en naauwkeurigheid. Pas heeft een talentvol impressionist niet zonder genialiteit zijn landschap [...] afgeflodderd.’

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fig. 10
Louis Marie Lemaire, Matinée de juin, from Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Palais des Champs-Elysées, Paris 1893

critics continued to think that impressionism only meant ill-defined shapes: ‘Mrs Mesdag has succeeded in maintaining a certain form, and although her technique is fairly free, she has not been reduced to tasteless shapelessness, which one all too often sees in the work of those who attempt to render an impression. The technique of the impressionists is frequently so crude and unskilful that I can find only one word for it: ugly.’⁵⁶

This equation of looseness of technique and impressionism was deeply rooted and pervasive, and led to sweeping and absurd conclusions; soon even Frans Hals and Rembrandt were included among the happy band of impressionists.⁵⁷ In fact, however, when we consider the method of painting, the use of colour and the choice of subject matter, the Dutch art that came to be termed ‘impressionist’ has very little in common with that of its French predecessors.

56 E.G.O. [= A.C. Loffelt], ‘De aquarellen in de Academie II,’ Het Vaderland (27 August 1891): ‘Mevrouw Mesdag is er in geslaagd haar techniek, hoe breed ook, niet te doen ontaarden in onsmaakvolle ruwheid, gelijk men te dikwijls ziet bij hen, die het indrukwekkende trachten te vertolken. De techniek der impressionistische kunst is niet zelden zoo grof en onbeholpen, dat ik slechts éen naam voor zulke kunstuitingen ken: lelijk.’

57 See e.g. Albert Plasschaert, Het Impressionisme, Ooltgenplaat 1911, p. 13.

International impressionism: a modernist discovery

From the 1880s on, more and more often critics in many European countries began to refer to much contemporary art as ‘impressionist,’ even when the works had little or nothing to do with the French movement. By this time the name was de rigueur for modern paintings, or those that wished to be seen as such. For the critics the spontaneity and individuality of the works began to play a greater role, and more value was placed on expression and originality. As Robert Jensen has observed, however, this is no reason why one should speak of these pictures in terms of ‘impressionism.’⁵⁸ Yet the tendency has been so compelling that even today, at the close of the 20th century, it is hard to eradicate.⁵⁹

Scholars have repeatedly linked the Hague and Amsterdam Schools with the French impressionists.⁶⁰ The confusion that triumphed at the end of the 19th century, when Dutch artists who despised the work of French painters such as Monet, Degas or Renoir were themselves labelled impressionists, has only increased with the continuing (mis)use of the term. Thus, in the 1991 introduction to the exhibition catalogue The age of Van Gogh: Dutch painting 1880-1895, a parallel was drawn between the subject matter of George Hendrik Breitner, Marius Bauer, Isaac Israëls and Willem de Zwart and that of their Parisian con-

58 Robert Jensen, Marketing modernism in fin-de-siècle Europe, Princeton, NJ 1994.

59 See also De Leeuw, op. cit. (note 3), p. 35. De Leeuw cites a very telling remark by Bernard Dorival: ‘This movement [impressionism] is even so highly regarded that its label is stuck on to artists who do not actually have much to do with it [...].’ More recently, in Norma Broude (ed.), World impressionism: the international movement, 1860-1920 (New York 1990), Brooks Adams treated the Hague School as a the fore-runner of the modernist work of Van Gogh and Piet Mondrian. Mesdag's Panorama in The Hague and P.J.C. Gabriel's In the month of July (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) are cited as the foremost examples of Dutch impressionism. The Panorama is most definitely not a good example of impressionist work, but rather of the most precise realism. Within the Hague School, Gabriel was something of a fish out of water, and his art is certainly not typical of the style; furthermore, however, his method of painting - placing mixed colours on the canvas, and then varnishing the work - is a world away from the technique of the French impressionists; see: exhib. cat. Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël 1828-1903: Colorist van de Haagse School, Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) & Cleves (B.C. Koekkoek Haus) 1998-99.

60 The important book by A.M. Hammacher, Amsterdamsch impressionisten en hun kring, Amsterdam 1946, contributed to a widespread familiarity with the term in this century.

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temporaries. Although only Manet is actually mentioned by name, the suggestion is made that there were close ties with other artists as well, for example Degas - after all, Breitner, Bauer and De Zwart also painted ballet dancers.⁶¹ Furthermore, Dutch and French artists apparently shared a love for depicting cafes, theatres and life on the city streets. From this the assumption arose that French impressionism had a profound influence on the Amsterdam School.

Comparisons based solely on subject matter are a dubious business. For one thing, it was not only impressionists who painted these kinds of scenes. The Dutch artists could just as easily have been inspired by a neo-impressionist like Seurat.⁶² Far more telling, however, is a comparison with those Salon artists who so often rendered the sophisticated urban life of Paris. Generally speaking, when Dutch artists visited the French capital they made sure not to miss the annual Salons. Jacobus van Looy's Luxurious summer (fig. 9), for example, can be better likened to Louis Marie Lemaire's Matinée de juin (fig. 10) than - as is so often the case - to work by Manet or Monet.⁶³ Even if Van Looy did not see Matinée de juin at the 1893 Salon he may still have known the work from the reproduction in the Salon catalogue.⁶⁴

It is common practice to draw a comparison between the work of Breitner, Isaac Israëls and Degas, particularly because of their method of cropping figures.⁶⁵ However, Degas was certainly not the first to introduce spectacular cut edges. The famous Anglo-Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema used a similar technique, and his fellow countrymen would certainly have known his work better than that of Degas.⁶⁶ The argument that when Dutch artists visited France they went not only to the Salons, the Louvre and the Luxembourg, but also visited ‘impressionist’ dealers such as Durand-Ruel is equally unconvincing.⁶⁷ In these artists' surviving documents we find no mention of the French impressionists.

fig. 11
Giuseppe de Nittis, La parfumerie Violet, n.d., Paris, Musée Carnavalet (photograph courtesy of the Photothèque des Musées de la Ville de Paris)

On the other hand, there is much praise for the painters of the Barbizon School. Veth and Willem Witsen visited Paris in 1885. Isaac Israëls was also a frequent visitor, on one occasion in 1889 accompanying the writer Frans Erens. That same year they met both Huysmans and Mallarmé, through whom they were introduced to Berthe Morisot, Manet's sister-in-law. At her home they saw and admired the artist's work. They also visited Theo van Gogh's gallery.⁶⁸ When writing of their visit they mention Manet,

61 Richard Bionda and Carel Blotkamp, ‘Introduction,’ exhib. cat. The age of Van Gogh: Dutch painting 1880-1895, Glasgow (The Burrell Collection) & Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1990-91, p. 15.

62 Compare, for example, the composition and placing of the figures in Isaac Israëls's Café chantant in a popular quarter in Amsterdam (c. 1893, Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum) and Seurat's Parade (1887-88, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), which was on view at the Les Vingt exhibition in Brussels in 1892. We know that Isaac Israëls attended the exhibition in 1884, when paintings by his father were being shown.

63 The age of Van Gogh, cit. (note 61), no. 58. See also exhib. cat. Jacobus van Looy, 1855-1930: Niets is zoo mooi als zien..., Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) & Helmond (Gemeentemuseum Helmond) 1998-99, no. 24 and Langs velden en wegen, cit. (note 22), no. 98.

64 Chris Will has demonstrated that Van Looy often used Salon pictures as models; see Chris Will, ‘Negentiende-eeuwse hispanisten en de flamencodans,’ Jong Holland 14 (1998), no. 4, pp. 38-39. Equally, it is not immediately apparent that Breitner's nudes were influenced by the work of Manet or Degas; both the painting technique and the compositions are more reminiscent of nudes exhibited at the annual Salon, for example Jacquesson de la Chevreuse's Étude (present location unknown), on view in 1885. For a comparison between the nudes of Breitner and Degas see exhib. cat. De schilders van Tachtig, cit. (note 28), no. 16.

65 The age of Van Gogh, cit. (note 61), no. 12.

66 See Julian Treuherz, ‘Introduction to Alma-Tadema,’ exhib. cat. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) & Liverpool (Walker Art Gallery) 1996-97, p. 12.

67 Cf. Bionda and Blotkamp, op. cit. (note 61), p. 17.

68 See Anna Wagner, Isaac Israëls, Rotterdam 1967, p. 27.

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fig. 12
Isaac Israëls, Mars's millinery on the Nieuwendijk, Amsterdam, 1893, Groningen, Groninger Museum

the Barbizon School, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Giuseppe de Nittis, but say not a word about any of the impressionists. In her monograph on Isaac Israëls Anna Wagner has stated quite rightly that his works have little in common with those of the impressionist group.⁶⁹ In fact, they bear a far more striking resemblance to the popular street scenes of de Nittis (figs. 11 and 12).

When it was presented to the State of the Netherlands in 1903 the Museum Mesdag was the first museum for modern art in the country. Despite the fact that it contained no work by the French impressionists, the collection was both fresh and experimental. This was largely due to the extemporaneous works of the Barbizon and Hague Schools it contained.⁷⁰ During the 20th century, however, ideas about museum presentation began to change. Seeking to modernise the image of the museum, the interiors were adapted during the 1950s and 60s to conform to these new concepts.⁷¹ Similar modernist attitudes contributed to the notion that The Hague and Amsterdam School painters were impressionists. For only the 19th-century art that could be considered a forerunner of the 20th-century avant garde - such as the work of Vincent van Gogh or Paul Cézanne - was believed to be of interest.

Although the artists of the Barbizon School are now no longer termed impressionists, those of both the Hague and Amsterdam Schools often are. This amalgamation does the Dutch art no good. Indeed, because of this comparison it has been impossible to gain an assessment without prejudices or tags - particularly from abroad. However, by mixing different international schools in museum presentations, as at the Museum Mesdag, it becomes clear that modern Dutch artists were far more interested in the Barbizon School than in their impressionist contemporaries.

69 Ibid., p. 42.

70 De Bodt, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 43-53.

71 See Ronald de Leeuw, ‘The Museum Mesdag: a short history,’ Van Gogh Museum Journal (1996), pp. 17-40.