French Friends

Last week was a big week for French Impressionists in Manhattan art galleries. From their capacious cellars, the firm of Durand-Ruel pulled out 13 pictures by Claude Monet to make a show that was not only a resume of the development of that Frenchman's own style but also a history of Impressionism. Starting with the grey, rather sharply painted Hyde Park, London (1870) and the blue and bright Canotiers `a Argenteuil, done in 1875 in a technique that now seems more modern than his later work, the canvases trace Monet's growing absorption in sunlight and the interplay of colors, down to one of his famed arrangements of water lilies in a misty light, painted in 1899 when he seemed to have lost all interest in form as such.

A little way down 57th Street, the recently established Bignou Galleries also had on view a Monet, several Cezannes and, as No. 1 headliner, a picture listed as among the seven greatest canvases by Edouard Manet, Le Linge ("Rinsing the Wash"). Just imported to the U. S., it was for sale for more than $150,000.

Typesetters are not the only persons confused by Monet and Manet. At the Salon of 1865, before they ever met, elegant Edouard Manet squinted at a couple of seascapes signed with the name Monet and cried: "Who is this Monet who looks as if he had taken my name and happens thus to profit by the noise I make?"

Painter Monet heard the remark and thereafter scrupulously signed his canvases Claude Monet. Later Monet and Manet became fast French friends. Though their names, their style, their faces and their beards were very much alike, Frenchmen of the 19th Century had no great difficulty differentiating between them.

Born in 1840 in Paris, Claude Monet was the dean of the Impressionists. He outlived all of them, thanks to his iron physique, died at the age of 86, a magnificent old gentleman with a silky white beard.

Born in 1832 in Paris, Edouard Manet lived, worked and played with the Impressionists but never completely accepted their theories of painting. He died at the age of 51 of paresis and blood poisoning.

Monet had but two interests, painting and gardening. Paris appalled him. He is never known to have made a quotable remark. Manet and his friends Degas and Clemenceau could and did trade epigrams with the sharpest tongues of the Second Empire. He was Parisian to the core, a dandy in his dress.

Monet was entirely dependent on the money his paintings brought him. Manet's rich father left him a comfortable income.

For money Manet frequently painted Monet. Monet, who made more money, never painted Manet.

During the Franco-Prussian War Manet became a staff officer, served gallantly, carried dispatches under fire at Champigny. Monet went to England.

Both men were married and both liked to do their painting outdoors in strong natural light. Manet, however, was first & last a figure painter and a realist while Monet was never interested in putting people, as such, on canvas.

Spectators may have been confused, but never lost their tempers over a Monet landscape. Manet's famed Olympia (a nude courtesan on a bed, receiving a bunch of flowers from her maid), his Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (nude ladies lunching on the grass with a party of gentlemen in velvet jackets) and last week's prize canvas Le Linge all caused artistic riots when they were first shown. It is hard for moderns to realize the excitement a picture of a buxom lady in a straw hat rinsing sheets in a sunny garden while her little daughter helps, caused when first exhibited. When Le Linge was refused by the Salon, apparently because the subject was not considered sufficiently "artistic," Edouard Manet showed it publicly in his own studio with a large notebook in front of it in which visitors could write their own criticisms. The notebook and the criticisms have been preserved. Sample: "My dear Manet! Ten years ago Baudelaire was right, and today you are. Let the world talk and go on working."--Leon Cladel.

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