All language subtitles for Secret Impressionists.eng

Impressionism is, still today,
a very successful art movement.

Even though it begun in the early
1870s, more than a century ago,

the Impressionist exhibitions
have still a lot of visitors.

It isn't an old-fashioned movement.

They were the first to break
free from centuries and centuries of stagnation

to choose creative freedom,
they insisted that:

"We paint what we
want, as we want,

and nobody can tell us if it's done
well or if the colours are right".

And they broke all the previous rules.

This exhibition is unique,

because it's like a box where we
can find some unknown treasures.

In fact, all the paintings come
from private collections.

These are artworks that won't
be seen again by an audience.

This exhibition is unique
and indeed one could use the word "secret".

There are artworks that have never
been exhibited since they were painted.

So, yes, it is like discovering a secret.

And through the proposed path for the visit,

which includes the chronological evolution,

the grouping of artists,
the diversity of themes,

visitors can discover
the history of Impressionism,

understanding the originality
behind each artist of the movement

and what these painters
brought to art history

at the end of the Twentieth century.

"One morning, one of us had run out
of black paint, so he used blue instead."

"That was the birth of Impressionism."

This anecdote,
told by Pierre-Auguste Renoir,

might sound like a joke,
and perhaps even a provocation.

Actually, it already reveals quite a bit
about the Impressionist's personality.

Who were the Impressionists?
They were a small group of painters.

They tried to develop
a more direct relationship

with the world around them,
particularly with nature.

They stepped outside their studios.

They were the voices,
the heroes of outdoor landscape painting.

Impressionism was both an art
movement and an aesthetic choice.

It dealt with a new
kind of sensibility,

a sensibility that was based
on a technical evolution,

but most of all, it came from
a very particular vision of the world.

Painting was important
because of its narrative qualities.

Impressionists changed the rules: the story
they wished to tell was of no consequences,

rather the manner in which
it was depicted gained importance.

The story wasn't important.
Everyday life was.

In order to exhibit his works,

an artist had to be evaluated
by a jury of art scholars and experts

who looked at the work and said: "This is
acceptable, you can show it", or "This one isn't".

That was how it worked
in France at that time.

When these artists
tried to begin their careers,

as all the other painters did, they would
go knocking on the Official Salon's door.

Impressionists,
who weren't called that yet,

were a young group of painters,
and weren't accepted by the Salon.

That means they couldn't support
themselves. What could they do?

Since nobody gave them the
chance to exhibit at the Salon,

they decided to establish a partnership

to present and promote their own
paintings in a private exhibition.

They arranged an exhibition in 1874,

in the studio of the famous photographer Nadar,
who kindly agreed to host them.

EXHIBITION OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS
OF IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING

Two art experts came
to look at the works.

One of them
could see just drafts and scribbles,

incomplete works, instead the other one,

who was a bit more open minded,
tried to understand...

They went through the whole exhibition,

and finally arrived in front
of "Impression, Sunrise".

The word Impression stuck with them, and they
both declared this as the Impressionist movement.

The word was coined at that very moment

and it would change forever
the perception of this movement.

Whether it's a matter of experimenting
with the shape of things or how to use colour,

or following the changing light
and its effects on nature,

these painters' expressive urgency
has always been led

by a tireless need to capture the moment,
challenge time,

gradually removing any distance
between reality and its free interpretation.

In order for something to exist,
it needs a name.

And Monet,
Renoir, Caillebotte, Cezanne

really needed to exist,
so they required a name.

The name "Impressionism",
coined by this art expert,

was used by the members
of the movement.

Why?

Because every single one of them
was focused on painting with brighter colours,

on painting the world as it was,

however each one of them
kept their own approach.

The Impressionists weren't a school,
they did not follow the same common rules,

they shared their focus,

but each artist gave his personal
interpretation to those inputs.

They had their own particularity.

They were jealous of their independence.

And this name,
Impressionism, was perfect,

because it was vague.

Before being a technique,
it was an aesthetic need,

a need for civilization.

Entering the image
in order to become a mirror of the soul.

A mirror of the soul can be a sublime
mirror, an immense mirror, a universal mirror.

But it could also be a simple mirror,
an everyday life mirror, a familiar mirror.

This was the first process: allowing
yourself to be absorbed in the painting.

People are always afraid of change, right?

So they expect to see what
they think is sort of familiar,

and in that sense,
they're behind with the times.

On the contrary,
the collector, the art-lover,

searches for something surprising,
something provocative.

So, for sure, they first saw Impressionism
as a momentous breakthrough in painting,

in its brushstrokes, colours and light,
and they focused on that.

Of course, the audience,
and the institutions they represent,

needed time, years, maybe decades,
to understand that breakthrough.

If we were to list the names of those
who understood from the beginning

the potential of these painters,
art dealer, Paul-Durand Ruel

would surely be the first in line.

Aside from being one of the first
to fall in love with the Impressionists,

he was also the pioneer who laid the foundations
of art dealing as we know it today,

changing the international market forever.

Paul Durand-Ruel,
my great-great-grandfather,

was the most important
Impressionists' art dealer.

Even his father was an art dealer in
the generation prior to Impressionism:

the 1830's School.

Paul Durand-Ruel
started his career with his father,

taking care of those artists, for about 15 years,
before the Impressionists came on the scene.

Then he made his own career as an art dealer,

he learned the job and how
to protect a contemporary artist.

Then, in 1870,
the Franco-Prussian war broke out in France,

and Paul Durand-Ruel moved his
gallery in London for two years.

He fled to London.

Monet and Pissarro
also moved to London,

where they met another fellow artist,
who was already a Paul Durand-Ruel's artist:

Charles François Daubigny,

Daubigny said to Durand-Ruel: "I would
like to introduce you to two artists,

they seem really promising".

Paul Durand-Ruel agreed, he saw the works
painted in London by Monet and Pissarro

and he fell in love with them.

So he decided
to embark in this new project.

Since that moment,
since 1870,

he devoted all his efforts
in promoting these painters,

with huge sacrifices, because their
paintings were rejected by everyone.

So all his clients disappeared.

He lost all his money, he bought
a lot of Impressionist paintings,

and, during his life,

he never doubted them and
he always stood up for them.

It was a long and hard struggle.

Impressionist were loved mostly
by collectors rather than public institutions.

They met great difficulties
when it came to exhibiting in museums

and were only accepted after the
Impressionist revolution had ended.

So, I always thought that
the great private collections

held artworks from the time in which the
Impressionists were the avant-garde of painting.

Of course, those treasures are hidden
from the public in private houses, and vaults,

so I've always wanted to be able to see them.

Speaking of secrets,
the eternal city never ceases to amaze.

In the heart of the capital,
close to the Roman Forum,

is a beautiful Baroque building,
which faces Piazza Venezia.

Palazzo Bonaparte was built
in different stages, beginning in 1657,

and was named after Napoleon's mother,
Maria-Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte.

The palace is decorated
in a stunning fashion,

also thanks to the impeccable taste
of its former owner,

who spent her life embellishing it with frescoes,
mosaics,

Venetian floors, statues,
and neo-classical decorations.

After a lengthy restoration,
these rooms,

which at the time were frequented
by the high clergy and aristocrats,

are now open to the public,
celebrating this event

with a journey through some
of the art world's greatest masterpieces.

The initial idea
is to think of a palace that's unique.

So my job is to try to understand
the meaning of this palace,

and what kind of exhibition
could empower that meaning.

Palazzo Bonaparte
is a house, a French house.

Art lovers from all over
the world would no doubt find this exhibition

of French Impressionist paintings
extremely captivating.

It's quite ironic that
we're presenting an Impressionist exhibition

in Palazzo Bonaparte, given
that Napoleon Bonaparte III

didn't like the
Impressionist movement.

When asked how long he'd take
to paint his works, Picasso used to say

"It took me a lifetime".

An exhibition such as this one, with artworks
coming from private collections all over the world,

requires a lifetime of hard work,

personal connections with art
experts and lots of research.

A curator searches
for artworks just as a detective would.

When you start
planning an exhibition,

you have a dream list
of works you'd wish to show.

However, you come across a few negative answers
from collectors, along with the positive ones.

In the end, you almost never get the exact
exhibition you have imagined at first.

Then, you enter the exhibition hall, and
the painting you imagined hanging on a wall,

suddenly looks better on
another wall or in another room.

So, the curators
have to be inspired by the space,

by Palazzo Bonaparte in this case.

It's important, also, to be inspired
by the artworks to understand

how to make them
interact with each other.

My job is to study
the artworks' state of preservation.

We don't touch the artwork,
but we check it very closely,

so that we can establish
everything that's on its surface.

To share an artwork,
which has never been seen before,

is an enormous gift from
a collector to the public.

Every time I have
to light Impressionist artworks,

I always find them
very difficult to interpret.

Every painting has its own history, so lighting
these paintings means adapting the light to them.

My tools are the luxmeter,

used to measure the quantity
of light that hits the painting;

and other tools with
a high colour rendering index.

But, in the end, what is really
important is how the artwork talks to you.

Whether it fascinates you,
or moves you in a certain way.

The thing that's very interesting
and exciting about this exhibition

is a certain number of technical
details and different subjects.

But, even more interestingly,

there are some paintings that reveal
the very essence of the artists who painted them.

"The Seine at Vétheuil",
by Claude Monet, is hanging in the first room,

at the entrance of the exhibition.

It's a wonderful painting from 1878,

from a period when Monet
was in great financial difficulties.

The 1870s for the Impressionists

were a very trying time,
because their paintings were despised.

They couldn't sell their paintings,
and were starving to death.

However, this work encompasses

Monet's art and
Impressionism's point of view.

Monet spent his whole life
studying light and observing it.

For an Impressionist, water was
a wonderful thing, it was a mirror.

So what did he have? The Seine, reflecting
the sky with the clouds, the sun and the light.

So it was perfect,
because Monet could really use this calm water

to represent his obsession: light.

This is obviously
a naturalist painting by Monet.

Naturalism, in this case, is a way
of approaching light, matter and structure.

This is what you obtain
with very minute

and particular brushstrokes.

Nothing in this landscape
is either necessary or possible.

It's about absorbing the landscape,
as I mentioned earlier.

This is The Seine at Lavacourt,
by Claude Monet, of 1878.

And, if you go outside Paris, along the Seine,
you have all the small towns,

like Argenteuil,
Roche-Guyon, Vétheuil,

all the way to Giverny and Vernon,
I've been to all of these towns.

I grew up in a middle-class family
both in Massachusetts and Maine,

but my mother was very knowledgeable
about Impressionist paintings.

My passion for art really started
as a youngster,

I actually knew at the age of five
who Monet and Renoir were.

It all happened by accident
that I started collecting.

When the market caved in, I'm talking about
the financial markets, in 1990,

it was a great opportunity
to buy really outstanding works.

I have 57 paintings,
and it's something I really like,

I look at it like these are all my children.

What's remarkable
about the painting in all Monet,

is the beautiful symmetry of the reflections,
even though he painted it quickly,

there's a perfect harmony between the reflection
of the clouds in the water and the sky,

or the reflection of the vegetation here.

There's an old famous saying,
they asked Cézanne about Monet at one point,

and they said:
"What do you think about your friend, Monet?"

and Cézanne said:
"Monet was an eye, but what an eye!".

And that's true, you can see that Monet
probably was the most adroit

and skilful of all the landscape painters
of that era.

For somebody who's a serious collector,
there are three things:

One: you should put them in the public domain
so other people can see them.

To keep them in your home,
especially if they're good paintings,

where nobody ever gets to see them,
I think is a bit selfish.

The second thing is you have a responsibility
to maintain them in good quality,

because you're trying to save the painting
for posterity, not just in your lifetime.

And then the third thing is that you
should be knowledgeable, I can lecture on them.

No artist can disregard the Impressionists,

it doesn't matter what kind
of artist he/she might be.

I was born in this house,
many years ago,

my grandfather was a painter,

he taught at the Academy at
the beginning of 1900's.

So the house was full of paintings,
from floor to ceiling.

In 1964, I went with
some friends to Assisi, just for fun,

to participate to an art contest.

I made my first painting,
using my grandfather's colours and canvas.

I won third prize
and to me it was a lot of money,

six hundred thousands liras in 1964,
it drove me crazy.

But that's how I started
painting and learning,

and the first artists I discovered
were the Impressionists.

At the beginning,
everybody copies the works of the masters,

in order to find your own style,

but there was a huge distance
between Monet and I.

It's as if I was flying
50cm from the ground,

but he was Batman, it was impossible
to even consider copying him.

I could look at this painting
for five hours straight, standing still.

It can be interpreted in many ways:

a realistic one, an abstract
one, a conceptual one.

It's like 3D; I mean, it has a depth,
a substance, which invites you to touch it.

It has the wind inside it.
There are no points of reference in it.

And your eyes can't stop moving,

they sort of start dancing
and it seems they'll never stop:

it's a perpetual motion.

In 1985, by chance,
I started working with glass

and it was a game-changer
for me, a true revolution.

It was a never ending, obsessive
daily research about transparency

and the colour of transparency.

And recently I added light to my works:

I started to backlight my canvases
and I discovered a different world,

both in canvas and in glass.

The paintings you can see
here were all made outdoors.

Outdoor painting is very important,

not only to have the right colour perception,

but even for the gesture itself.

Everything changes quickly,
even the brushstroke is different,

because it's faster, it's
more about the gesture.

If you wish to understand
the Impressionists' artworks

you have to observe water that reflects
directly on an Impressionist painting.

It's a form of light diffraction

and diffusion of the colours.

What is the job of a painter?
The painter creates the place.

Monet was fully aware of this.

He used certain fragments
of real life to re-invent it.

And what does it mean
to work with nature?

It means that nature
creates as much as the artist.

Nature is the artist.

In the "Island of Nettles", the artist
depicts the subject in a few brush strokes,

almost liquefying the shapes
and wrapping them in an evanescent atmosphere.

It's no surprise that a number of critics
commented on this type of artwork

as being mysteriously evocative
or having dreamlike sequences.

Monet continued to follow the vibration
of light and colour throughout his life,

desperately trying to convey onto canvas
the chromatic violence which assaulted his eyes.

"It'd be better to have a palette made
of diamonds and gems", he once wrote.

Monet's art is a continuous discovery

moved by the need to overcome
the threshold of perception

and bring the image closer
to a purely internalized concept,

far from the objectivity of things.

It was when he immersed himself
into the world of water lilies

that the artist reached
the end of this study,

becoming more conscious
of the unfathomable essence of being.

This concept was profoundly important
for the future of art.

The exhibition has a room
entirely dedicated to Camille Pissarro.

Pissarro practically
lived his entire life in the countryside,

and was surrounded by farmers.

From 1880,

he found it interesting to use
farmers as his main subject.

So, let's look at the painting.

I sort of like the interaction between
the gardener and the female helper here.

And it shows that he breathed humanity
into his characters.

So, this is typical,
these are probably workers around his house,

working in the back fields.

You cannot identify who the people are,
they're just common labourers,

but there was the dignity of work which both Millet
and Pissarro tried to imbue into their paintings.

Pissarro painted anonymous farmers,
so we can't identify these people.

But it didn't matter to him.
What mattered was painting his neighbours.

In fact, he painted his neighbourhood.

There wasn't any message from Pissarro.

It was simply real people
portrayed in a real context.

Caught between expressive urgency
and the search for a formal synthesis,

that almost transcends into spirituality.

Pissarro affirms: "When I start to paint,
the first thing I tend to do

is to capture the harmonic shape
between the sky, this land, and this water.

There must necessarily be a connection
which can only be a system of harmonies.

This is the ultimate challenge
that I must overcome.

From a standpoint of painterly quality,
we talk about activating the picture plane,

every last millimetre is filled
with common brushwork,

overlay of paint,
white over grey, red over green.

The haystack is very complicated,
it's complex,

you have vertical, horizontal, diagonal strokes,
with quite a bit of build-up of impasto

to make the haystack
feel like it's got real depth to it,

like you could reach out, touch it,
and grab a piece of straw out of the painting.

So, by accessing the matter,

we could indeed feel
this landscape

as if it was a mirror of our soul,

of our great soul,

but also of our everyday-life soul.

It's necessary to create a special

comprehensive relationship
between all the artwork's elements.

Therefore, it was necessary to work comprehensively:
painting with light colours on light backgrounds,

superimposing different shades,
blending elements,

overshadowing a subject
that remained deeply realistic

even if it was absorbed
and deeply naturalist.

What does "naturalist" mean?

It means that we see the grain,
we see the light trapped in the colour:

this is the real
texture of the painting.

For example, Pissarro
was perfectly present in his works of Éragny.

And the paintings in this exhibition
allow us to perceive that very well,

I would say, paradisiacal
dimension of the garden.

Those gardens, those moments in Éragny,

suddenly acquired a mythical,
almost mythological dimension,

because they were
Arcadia or Ovid's scenes,

which referred to eternal
moments in those daily scenes.

And this, once again,
was a big concern for Impressionists.

If Pissarro's countryside seems to follow
along to the rhythms of the farmers at work,

Alfred Sisley's, on the other hand, radically
transforms with the changing of the seasons.

Sometimes,
the artist paints idyllic landscapes,

such as the ones in which the sky,
the riverbanks,

the plants and trees,
celebrate as one.

A universal joy, and where, at times, we could
even see some excursionists enjoying the day.

At other times, however,
the paintings' protagonist was winter itself,

as in Coeur-Volant Road to Louveciennes
where the fog and snow correspond directly

with the British artist's lonely
and introverted character.

This work by Sisley is amazing:

it essentially has a cinematic point
of view, it's like two stage curtains

and one can move inside it,
from here back to over there on the hill.

Or even look below on these two boys.

The balance is amazing,
the white and the trees,

and these dry branches.

It's like a movie frame.

If you have the chance to be an
artist, you need to find your voice.

That's the hard part, you
need to find your unique voice.

I'm a photographer. I started to work as a
photographer during high school, when I was 15.

Afterwards this passion became
an actual job when I was about 22 or 23,

I moved to London for a time
and photographed jazz musicians

and rock stars, and eventually began
photographing the world of cinema.

You could say that my expertise,
my passion is to take portraits.

The first thing that hit me
about Impressionist paintings, is this thing,

it's as if they're slightly out of focus.

The artworks seem to move.

We see these fields,
in which the barley is moving,

the boats going by, the steam...

That's another great innovation
made by the Impressionists:

getting the chance
to enter the landscape.

It's a journey through painting,

sustained by the search for colour.

I feel there's something amazing.

Something that's actually
secret, or, better yet, hidden.

Something that goes
undetected at first glance.

The Impressionists,
I think, gave new lymph, at one point, to art.

Because they loved to experiment.

It was a great flash, a blast,

almost like the punk movement:
they completely broke off,

with the classic
form of writing music,

but then created a great movement.

Late 19th century Paris
seemed tailor-made for the Impressionists.

It is a place bursting with inspiration,

without which these artists' works
would have undoubtedly been very different.

Interestingly enough,
it was Henry James

who best described
the atmosphere perceived by the painters.

In his novel, "The Ambassadors", he
portrayed the city as a vast and bright Babylon,

a shiny jewel,
an enormous, iridescent object

in which parts were not to be discriminated,
nor differences comfortably marked.

It twinkled and trembled and melted together,
and what appeared purely superficial one moment,

seemed purely profound the next.

Gustave Caillebotte
was a peculiar figure inside the group

because he was also
the Impressionists' patron.

In this artwork, there are both
innovations in style and in the theme.

It's as if the artist was letting
us access the scene directly,

with a modernity well represented
by a powerful diagonal,

a strong diagonal,

where, on one hand,
we see a sort of sketch,

which is the balcony,
painted with a few synthetic brushstrokes,

which give us the measure
of his physical aspect.

On the other hand, the Haussmann
Boulevard is covered by vegetation,

by trees, painted exactly
in an early Impressionist manner.

The two men are looking, observing,

as if something important
is going on, something we can't see

but they can,

and there's this intense stare
through the vegetation,

towards that urban reality,
which is what Caillebotte is hinting at.

The city belongs to everyone,
and is being upheld here as a great value.

When Baudelaire released
"The painter of Modern Life", in 1863,

he identified urban life as an incentive,

a place where the so-called
"flaneur", i.e. a dandy,

a gentleman, could just stroll
around with no specific destination,

but feel energized by the
new feelings the city created.

This is an interior scene,
a middle-class interior,

the backlighting enhancing
the woman's profile.

The reference,
even if it's not a description,

is clearly to Flaubert's
Madame Bovary.

She could be Emma Bovary,
whereas he, the figure seated with a newspaper,

could be her husband Charles.

In fact, Flaubert
wrote about Emma's character, saying:

"her life was as cold as a barn facing north,

and boredom, that silent spider,

weaved its web in all her heart's corners".

On the other hand, she, Emma Bovary,

was cruel towards her
husband when she remarked:

"Charles' conversation
was flat as a sidewalk".

When the artwork was exhibited,
an art critic argued that

the letters of the advertising sign

in front of the building,
ruined the painting.

This element of "interference" in the painting

was actually anticipating
Toulouse Lautrec's work,

when he represented
the Moulin Rouge poster.

So, in some ways
he anticipated advertising in art.

In this room the glance theme is essential.

And the meaning of the painting
isn't only what can be seen at first,

but it's something that goes
throughout the artwork itself.

When we think about Berthe Morisot,

we think about a particular theme:

the theme of childhood, young
girls like her own daughter Julie,

who had been her favourite model,

we think about her
Parisian young women

and we imagine an art that
we could define feminine.

However,
if we take a closer look at her art,

we notice that Berthe Morisot

didn't wish to reveal
something about her model.

She didn't wish to reveal

something about her daughter's personality.

She didn't show the face
of the woman who is in front of the mirror.

Why?

Because that was not her goal,

Berthe Morisot didn't
want to paint a portrait,

Berthe Morisot didn't want
to describe everyday life in Paris,

Berthe Morisot, instead, wanted
to show light reflecting on the skin.

Berthe Morisot aimed to finally paint light.

So is she a feminist painter,
or just a painter?

We can only wonder...

Think about Claude Monet
who painted flowers for over 25 years.

What are we to make of this?

As Claude Monet painted flowers,

Berthe Morisot painted women.

Claude Monet
didn't care about what he was painting

as much as he cared about
how he was painting it

same as Berthe Morisot was more
interested in how to paint her subject,

than in her subject itself.

The importance of developing one's
own vision was placed above everything else.

The goal was to replace
a purely perceptional art, with a concept art.

Whether painting the face of a small girl,
water, plants, or even the sky,

Berthe Morisot constructed a relationship
between the object's surface and their depiction,

which was at the heart
of the Impressionist philosophy.

The result was an image that
could be considered both plausible and evocative.

Berthe Morisot
was a true bourgeois.

She was a bourgeois
who lived in a well-built,

and expensively furnished house,
at the beginning of the 1800s.

In her room she exhibited a 'psyché',

which was a tilting mirror,

and it inspired her a number of paintings,

like the one that we can see here.

What do we see?

A young woman from behind, slightly
undressed, who's looking at herself in a mirror.

And we can't see anything of her,
neither her face, nor her chest.

Berthe Morisot
played with the effect of the mirror, and,

in a sense, she gave her model
an element of virginal purity,

which was a distinctive feature
in Berthe Morisot's artworks.

She portrayed
those grooming moments in her works

rarely portraying nudes and always
in a very chaste and respectful way.

Also, unlike many artists
who painted the female nude, in particular Degas,

Berthe Morisot depicted
women in a very respectful way,

representing them in an
intimacy that was never vulgar,

always very decent.

Certainly, it was a way to respect herself.

The more she was a slave
to her intransigence, to her perfectionism,

the more her paintings became bright,

the more they acquired splendour and light.

She was Monet's friend,
Renoir's colleague, and Manet's muse.

Manet wasn't just anyone: he was the main figure,
of that group of artists called Impressionists.

He was a bit older

than the others and paved
the way for a new artistic style.

Manet's own technique
is really something incredible.

To me, it's like something
from an outside world.

You can see that also in the painting

"Berthe Morisot with a veil",
exhibited here.

What are we looking at?
Just one thing: the glance.

It's extraordinary
how it erases all the other elements,

the single thing that
attracts your attention,

is Berthe's gaze.

When you focus
only on her glance,

this painting becomes
something unbelievable.

This portrait
of Berthe Morisot is very particular.

What does it have of Manet
and what does it have of Morisot?

The shades and colours:

Manet was the painter that
best embodied the connection

between Spanish and French
art, through his use of black.

Morisot was a young woman
admired for her style and clothes.

She was well known for her black
dresses and black necklaces.

In this portrait
with its very narrow frame,

we can see the black from Manet
on Berthe Morisot with the veil.

It was painted in a fast,
almost violent way, the style

is free and aggressive as if Manet
was trying to disfigure Morisot.

This artwork was kept in a very
famous collection in Southern France.

When the collector died, Renoir,
who lived in the region at the time,

went to see the collection
and wrote to Durand-Ruel:

"This portrait by Manet
is of a very ugly woman".

He didn't even recognise Berthe Morisot.

The portrait is one
of the freest paintings by Manet,

but probably
also the evidence of an intimacy,

a close bond between
the painter and his model.

Édouard Manet also happened
to be the artist who united the Impressionists

way before they decided to organise themselves
and officially become a group.

Each Thursday they met
in the painter's Parisian study,

to exchange ideas and opinions
about art and life.

Among them was also Monet,
who remembered those days

spent with his friends
with these words:

"There wasn't anything better and more interesting
than those long and frequent discussions

and those animated conflicts of opinion,
they kept our spirits alive,

and provided that element of enthusiasm
which supported us for weeks on end,

until we finally gave expression to those ideas
born in the study itself.

We came back from those nights
with greater conviction

and much clearer and better defined ideas".

The Impressionists were like a big family.

They shared some common ground

and an identical way of conceiving painting.

However, luckily every painter
had their own different style.

For example, when we write,

we have a personal style and
we can't copy one another.

In painting it's very much the same:
everyone has their own brushstroke

and their own style
in painting different subjects.

In this exhibition we have the chance to...

discover some of the most
audacious works by these painters,

because private collectors
could and still can

choose relatively unknown
artworks, am I right?

Artworks in which the artist was himself,
but also who he could have become,

taking paths they might abandon,

in which nobody would recognize him.

So, sometimes, exhibitions, group
exhibitions can allow us to discover

that painters aren't always
what they seem to be, what they're famous for,

but a painter is someone who keeps
experimenting even after he is successful,

and maybe especially for that reason,
such as Renoir did.

In this exhibition there's the portrait of Mme
Joseph Durand-Ruel, my great grandmother.

She was 43 years old when it was painted.

Personally,
I think she looks older than that.

In this painting
we can find the three main features by Renoir:

she was a portraitist,

he loved women, and he loved colour.

Here we have the "Tête de femme"
by Renoir, of 1887.

My mum's favourite painter
had always been Renoir,

she always said Renoir painted
the most beautiful women,

which I think is correct,
he made women come alive and look very sensual.

What's interesting is if you move
from one side to the other,

her eyes seem to rotate with you,
it's an unusual feature

that sometimes you see in the old masses, you don't
see very prevalently in an Impressionist painting.

And, if you look throughout,
you see the overlay of colour,

the grey tones along the neck,
beautiful red tones on her lips and on the cheeks.

But what's also interesting about the painting
is that the background is like vegetation,

it's an unusual kind of perspective,
but the background contains common brushworks,

which references his Impressionist period,

so you sort of have a conflation
of his Italianate eye, and his look at it,

with the old-fashioned Impressionism in the back.

Every artist evolves, he or she never stays
on the same style, on the same technique.

I think Renoir, for example, in the 80s,

when he was moving on, and
painted with a new technique,

with fast, rapid brushstrokes,

then decided to go back
to painting in a classical way.

So, after this decision,
he travelled to Italy.

During this trip he saw Raphael's
paintings and he was so impressed,

that classical art re-captured him,
and you can see that in his paintings.

Driven by the search of a form
that could combine the purity of classicism,

and his Impressionist DNA,
Renoir went so far as to say things like:

"I think I shall truly surpass Raphael,

the audience will remain awestruck."

This painting is called
"Martial Caillebotte's children".

The title itself says a lot
about European culture,

because the children weren't only Martial
Caillebotte's, but also his wife's: Marie Minoret.

Nowadays,
some things in particular catch our eye.

The first is of course the narrow frame.

You might think these are two girls,

instead Jean, the boy, is on the left whereas
Geneviève, the girl, is on the right.

Boys used to be dressed in a girly fashion,
til they were 7, and grow their hair very long.

Renoir particularly liked that style,

so his own sons were dressed in that
fashion and did wonderful portraits

of them looking almost "en travesti"
where they looked like girls.

We could compare this painting
with another portrait with children

which is useful to understand
how much time has passed

from a purely Impressionist painting such as the
"Portrait of Madame Charpentier and her children"

and this one.

The Impressionist technique
is apparently more innovative,

however the framing
is quite conventional:

the living room with the sofa
and carpet are in full view.

Instead in this one, Renoir erased everything except
for the children, who are the core of the painting.

There's no space around them.

What remains
of the children's room is the couch

and no furnishing at all, aside
from some children's books.

Another interesting factor
is the reduction of the colour palette.

There are very few colours,
a symphony of whites, greys and pinks.

Renoir used to be
an incredible master of colour,

however here he was
experimenting by subtraction.

I've also always been struck by the shoes,

because painting feet, or shoes,
wasn't very academic:

they were considered
as a lesser part of the human body.

So of course a painter from
the academy shouldn't be painting feet.

Painting shoes was never a neutral choice:

it could almost be a political statement,

as in Van Gogh's working class shoes.

Gustave, Martial's brother,
who was the children's father,

died in 1894, a year before
this painting was made,

leaving to the French state,

his collection of Impressionist paintings,
among which were many Renoirs.

But on one condition:
that the French state accepted them,

and exhibited them accordingly, in the museum
palaces, such as the Louvre or the Luxembourg.

It was a very provocative request,
because it led the French state to admit,

through its salons,
after it had refused these artists,

and accept that Impressionism
had indeed changed painting forever,

and that this painting had "won".

So, in this sense, Renoir, despite his
personal crisis regarding Impressionism,

undertook the task
of convincing the French state,

and Martial, the children's father,
tried to help him.

In a way, he made Impressionism
finally take its place in Art History,

but he was also free to take another course.

As the century drew to a close,

even the artists who were once the most stubborn
in opposing conventional art

began to fear they were no longer able
to read the world through their art.

They feared that their technique
had become transitory,

fleeting,
almost self-indulgent.

Monet responded by pushing his principle
of immediacy above and beyond reality.

Pissarro went on to focus
on his pointillism technique again.

And we just mentioned how Renoir
found his way by going back to drawing,

placing attention on detail and blending
classical forms with bold new ideas.

Nevertheless, those vital conquests
in the world of art made by the Impressionists,

managed to inspire a generation of new artists.

In 1886
a new generation of painters appeared.

But Impressionists still had to
be recognised by the public:

their voice, their style, their technique,
their subjects, were still rejected.

Everybody thought their paintings
were ugly and nobody wanted to buy them,

so some artists were already
making changes in that technique.

So the Impressionists pave the way

for new kind of techniques.

This is the generation
of Seraut and Signac developing pointillism.

The pointillist artist placed small dots one
close to the next, but never mixed the colours.

Think how long it took for each painting,

having to place each point close to
the next and then wait for it to dry,

otherwise the colour would mix.

Between each point
there wasn't the smallest stain of paint.

And this technique
came from the chemist Chevreul,

who wrote a book on how
colours could blend visually.

Instead of blending and mixing colours
on a palette, and then on the canvas,

the spectator's eye
was doing all the blending.

So placing two points
of complementary colours or vice versa

created a brand new colour
in the eye of the audience.

All it took was to apply
the technique in a scientific way.

You can see here some artworks by Cross,

and they're very bright,
because if the technique is well executed,

landscapes are easily
full of sun and of light.

This painting by Cross is a landscape with goats

and it was painted
in southern France.

It's a typical pointillist painting.

The trees in the foreground are in shadow,

whereas the background is lit up
by the light of the south,

however this technique
seems less genuine

than the Impressionist technique.

Both pointillism and Impressionism
were born from the same necessities,

to capture nature and landscape
in their brighter essence,

trying to translate that brightness onto canvas
through the use of colour.

Though they shared
the same starting point,

the travelled roads and the final result
are diametrically opposite.

While Impressionist painters related themselves
to landscape through instinct and emotions,

pointillism did the exact opposite.

Their way of painting was rational,
methodical,

detached,
and required a long time to finish.

During the positive climate
at the end of the century,

pointillism theorised and practised an art

based upon rigid and precise
scientific laws.

This is why Georges Seurat,
the founder of the post-Impressionist movement,

couldn't stand this term.

He had greatly studied
the theory of colours,

and it had taken him over two years to paint
his masterpiece, "La Grande Jatte".

He felt it belittling to be remembered
as someone who paints with dots.

To that end, he coined a new definition
for the movement, "chromoluminarism".

Unfortunately, the term didn't stick
but, in any case, the pointillism movement,

still today, influences every artist

who focuses on the decomposition
of light and its perception.

"Sails and Pines"
by Signac is a key work of art:

in this landscape, the pointillist
technique is exaggerated,

and you can actually see
the single brushstrokes.

Russelberg, exhibited with
an equally important piece,

wrote provocatively to Signac,

inquiring why one should
keep painting reality,

in a recognisable way.

Probably,
given the evolution of this technique

and this separation between brushstrokes,

he'd easily be able to paint
something illogic or unrecognisable.

He was saying it as a provocation,

but he probably didn't
realise that after all,

that 19th century art was
reaching that pivotal moment,

in 1907, when Picasso painted
"Les Demoiselles D'Avignon",

which inaugurated a new, a different,

but equally fundamental
chapter in Art History.

I think Impressionists paved
the way for all future generations.

They revolutionized art
and all artists that followed,

would try to do something
different in order to get noticed.

They would apply new
techniques and subjects.

It'd be a gradual evolution,

because it's impossible
to go from figurative painting,

the Impressionists were very figurative,
to abstract painting.

But what happens is that the innovation

takes place simultaneously.

The Impressionists, with their audacity,

influenced the following generations:

the Neo-Impressionists,
the Pointillists,

the Nabi, the Pont-Aven school,

Fauvism,
which preceded abstract art:

light and colour would
dominate their paintings.

And colour
would become increasingly important

for the following artists,
until the climax, in 1905,

with Fauvism that would be
the achievement of pure colour.

Impressionists completely
revolutionised painting for them.

Future generations
would be inspired by their innovations,

and would rework them in their own way.

But in the end, I think,
what remains are the Impressionists,

their way to use lights,
colours, their change of style,

they totally revolutionized
the previous artistic codes.

All the following movements
would have a common ground:

the mutation, the courage
to change without fear of being judged.

The Impressionists' legacy left
an unparalleled mark upon Art History,

opening the doors to the avant-garde movements
of the 20th century.

They completely revolutionised
the manner in which one conceives,

creates,
and observes painting.

Today, almost 150 years
after their first collective exhibition,

they give no indication
of being out of style,

and enthusiasts from all over the world
still wait in line

to once again explore the evocative
and mysterious world of Impressionism.

When I work as a guide in the exhibitions,

I want visitors to learn
something from all the paintings.

To me it's vital that they come out from the
exhibition having learned something important.

I look at their reactions
in front of a painting.

They love seeing that light.

These paintings are heart-warming,

and I believe also easy to access.

When you see an Impressionist
painting, you feel good,

it's an injection of happiness,
like a sunbeam.

I'm always enchanted;

I never get tired of seeing
these paintings,

so luminous and m