LE CHARIVARI.

April 25, 1874

Exhibition of the Impressionists

Louis Leroy

Oh, it was indeed a strenuous day ... when I ventured into the first exhibition on the
boulevard des Capucines in the company of Mr. Joseph Vincent: landscape painter, pupil of
the academic master, Bertin, and recipient of medals! The rash man had come there without
suspecting anything; he thought that he would see the kind of painting one sees
everywhere, good and bad, Well, he was expecting them to be more bad than good, but not
hostile to good artistic manners, still with a devotion to form, and respect for the masters.
But when we arrivedOh, form! Oh, the masters! We don't want them any more, my poor
fellow! We've changed all that, they said.

Upon entering the first room, Joseph Vincent received an initial shock in front of
the Dancer by M. Renoir.

"What a pity," he said to me, "that the painter, who has a certain understanding of
color, doesn't draw better; his dancer's legs are as cottony as the gauze of her skirts."

"I find you hard on him," I replied. "On the contrary, the drawing is very tight."

Vincent, believing that I was being ironical, contented himself with shrugging his
shoulders, not taking the trouble to answer. Then, very quietly, with my most naive air, I led
him before the Ploughed Field of Mr. Pissarro. At the sight of this astounding landscape, the
good man thought that the lenses of his spectacles were dirty. He wiped them carefully and
replaced them on his nose.
 "By Michalon!" he cried. "What on earth is that?"

"You see ... a hoarfrost on deeply ploughed furrows."

"Those furrows? That frost? But they are palette-scrapings placed uniformly on a
dirty canvas. It has neither head nor tail, top nor bottom, front nor back."

"Perhaps ... but the impression is there."

"Well, it's a funny impression! Oh ... and this?"

"An Orchard by Mr. Sisley. I'd like to point out the small tree on the right; it's nice, but
the impression ... "

The poor man rambled on this way quite peacefully, and nothing led me to anticipate
the unfortunate accident which was to be the result of his visit to this hair-raising exhibition.
He even sustained, without major injury, viewing the Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor by M.
Claude Monet, perhaps because I tore him away from dangerous contemplation of this work
before the small, noxious figures in the foreground could produce their effect.

Unfortunately, I was imprudent enough to leave him too long in front of

"Ah-ha!" he sneered in Mephistophelian manner. "Is that brilliant enough, now!

"Why, those are people walking along," I replied.

"Do I look like that when I'm walking along the boulevard des Capucines? Blood and
thunder! A bit of paint here, a bit there, slapdash, any old way. It's unheard of, appalling! I'll
get a stroke from it, for sure."
 I attempted to calm him by showing him the St. Denis Canal by Mr. Lpine and the
Butte Montmartre by Mr. Ottin, both quite delicate in tone; but fate was strongest of all:
the Cabbages of M. Pissarro stopped him as he was passing by and from red he became
scarlet.

"Those are cabbages," I told him in a gently persuasive voice.

"Oh, the poor wretches, aren't they caricatured! I swear not to eat any more as long
as I live!"

"Yet it's not their fault if the painter ... "

"Be quiet, or I'll do something terrible."

Suddenly he gave a loud cry upon catching sight of the Maison du pendu by M. Paul
Czanne. The stupendous impasto of this painting accomplished the work begun by
the Boulevard des Capucines; Mr. Vincent became delirious.

At first his madness was fairly mild. Taking the point of view of the impressionists, he
let himself go along their lines: "Boudin has some talent," he remarked to me before a beach
scene by that artist; "but why does he fiddle so with his marines?"

"Oh, you consider his painting too finished?"

"Unquestionably. Now take Mademoiselle Morisot! That young lady is not interested
in reproducing trifling details. When she has a hand to paint she makes exactly as many
brushstrokes lengthwise as there are fingers and the business is done. Stupid people who
are finicky about the drawing of a hand don't understand a thing about impressionism, and
great Manet would chase them out of his republic."

"Then Mr. Renoir is following the proper path; there is nothing superfluous in
his Harvesters. I might almost say that his figures ... "

" ... are even too finished."

"Oh, Mr. Vincent! But do look at those three strips of color, which are supposed to
represent a man in the midst of the wheat!"
 "There are two too many; one would be enough."

I glanced at Mr. Vincent; his countenance was turning a deep red. A catastrophe
seemed to me imminent, and it was reserved to Mr. Monet to contribute the last straw.

"Ah, there he is, there he is!" he cried, in front of No. 98. "1 recognize him, my
favorite! What does that canvas depict? Look at the catalogue."

"Impression, Sunrise."

"Impression I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed,
there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship!
Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape."

In vain I sought to revive his expiring reason ... but the horrible fascinated him. The
Laundress, so badly laundered, of Mr. Degas drove him to cries of admiration. Sisley himself
appeared to him affected and precious. To indulge his insanity and out of fear of irritating
him, I looked for what was tolerable among the impressionist pictures, and I acknowledged
without too much difficulty that the bread, grapes, and chair of Breakfast, by M. Monet, were
good bits of painting. But he rejected these concessions.

"No, no!" he cried. "Monet is weakening there. Too finished, too finished!

Finally, the pitcher ran over. The skull of Mr. Vincent, assailed from too many sides,
went completely to pieces. He paused before the public guard who watches over all these
art pieces and, pretending that he was a portrait, began for my benefit a very emphatic
criticism.

Is he ugly enough?" he remarked, shrugging his shoulders. "From the front, he has
two eyes ... and a nose ... and a mouth! Impressionists wouldn't have thus sacrificed to
detail. With what the painter has expended in the way of useless things, Monet would have
done twenty public guards!"

"Keep moving, will you!" said the "portrait."

"You hear him-he even talks! The poor fool who daubed at him must have spent a lot
of time at it!"
 And in order to give the appropriate seriousness to his theory of aesthetics, Mr.
Vincent began to dance the scalp dance in front of the bewildered guard, crying in a
strangled voice: "Hi-ho! I am impression on the march, the avenging palette knife,
the Boulevard des Capucines of Monet, the Maison du pendu and the Modern Olympia of
Czanne. Hi-ho! Hi-ho!"