If you think of Impressionism, chances are you’ll mostly think of paintings. But there are also Impressionist sculptures, drawings and prints. We will go into that in more detail this episode.
Revolutionary
The Impressionists were revolutionary because they saw drawings as fully-fledged artworks, not just preliminary studies. They exhibited their sketches, and they were also for sale. What made all of these artworks using different techniques and materials Impressionistic, is their unpolished, sketchy character, and their focus on light and atmosphere at a specific moment. The maker’s personal mark is always visible, sometimes literally: on some sculptures, you can see fingerprints.
Edgar Degas, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, 1880–1882 (cast 1922), Museum Boijmans, Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, loan Stichting Boijmans Van Beuningen, Photo: Tom Haartsen
Sculptures
This little girl looks like she could spring into action at any moment. She is only 98 cm tall, but she is very lifelike. And this is only a bronze cast; the original looked even more realistic, because Degas moulded the ballerina in a soft wax (instead of the white marble that was customary in the sculpture of his time). Degas also used real hair and a fabric tutu.
When the public first saw this sculpture at the Impressionist Exhibition in 1881, they were shocked. It was so lifelike that it made them feel uncomfortable. As if the artist had plucked the girl (clearly from the working classes) from backstage at the theatre and put her on a pedestal. Due to all of the fuss, Degas never exhibited the wax sculpture again. Following his death, twenty-five bronze casts were made.
Edgar Degas, Woman Bathing, 1887
Drawings
This work may look like a painting, but Degas made it using pastel on paper. While nude figures have been around in art for centuries, the nudes in Degas’ pastels elicited cries of outrage at the Impressionist Exhibition. The public was familiar with nudes in Biblical or mythological scenes, they were the idealised bodies of goddesses: smooth figures in flattering positions. This was acceptable nudity at the time, but Degas did things differently: he depicted the female body as realistically as he could, without idealising it.
In doing so, Degas was ahead of his time. Perhaps too far ahead for the public’s taste: they had the feeling that they were witnessing an intimate scene that they were not supposed to see. Like walking into the bathroom without realising that someone is taking a shower.
When the Van Gogh Museum purchased the work in 2020, the nude once again caused quite a stir. Aren’t there already enough nude female bottoms at museums? And shouldn’t the voyeuristic male gaze be questioned and criticised? Or is it all a lot more nuanced than this?
Prints
Getting up, washing or getting dressed; all intimate daily rituals that you rarely see other people doing. In the 19th century, it was highly unusual to see such scenes depicted, with well-to-do, contemporary people. This is exactly why the Impressionists liked the subject, and what makes this series of prints by Mary Cassatt special. Everyone can recognise the scenes, but they also offer a glimpse inside the houses and lives of these wealthy women, with their luxury dresses and rooms decorated in colourful wallpaper.
With her Impressionistic paintings and drawings, Mary Cassatt was one of the trailblazers of the Parisian artworld in the late 19th century. In 1890, she was deeply inspired by a retrospective exhibition of Japanese colour woodcuts, and decided to make her own colour etchings.
Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing (La Toilette) from the series The Ten, 1891
Mary Cassatt, The Letter from the series The Ten, 1891
Mary Cassatt, The Fitting from the series The Ten, 1891
This required a complex printing technique, which artists usually entrusted entirely to a printer. Cassatt decided to be closely involved in the whole process. She worked with the renowned printer Leroy to make a series of ten refined colour etchings, which are now seen as the absolute pinnacle of Impressionist graphic work. In 2021, the Van Gogh Museum acquired three etchings from this series.
Next episode
In the next episode, we will explore a number of Impressionist highlights in Dutch museums. Paintings by Claude Monet, Berthe Morissot and Camille Pissarro. What makes these works so special, and how did they come to be in the Netherlands?