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2. “Impressionism” as a Contested Term in Dutch Art Criticism, 1870–1900
​Joost van der Hoeven
Description: Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism
Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism
In an era when a quick internet search yields innumerable images from across the world, it’s difficult to imagine being entirely reliant on verbal or literary descriptions of those images. Vincent van Gogh alluded to this difficulty when writing to his sister, Willemien, about his first encounter with...
Author
​Joost van der Hoeven
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2020 Alexis Clark and Frances Fowle
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00198.004
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20002
Chapter subject tags:Gogh, Vincent van, 1866-1911Barbizon schoolImpressionism (Art)Impressionism (Art)--FranceArt criticism--Netherlands--History--19th centurySalons--France--History--19th centuryArt, French--19th century--ExhibitionsPainting--Technique--France--History--19th centuryHague school of paintingMauve, Anton, 1838-1888Israëls, Jozef, 1824-1911Breitner, George Hendrik, 1857-1923Israels, Isaac Lazarus, 1865-1934Impressionism (Art)--Netherlands
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2. “Impressionism” as a Contested Term in Dutch Art Criticism, 1870–1900
Joost van der Hoeven
In an era when a quick internet search yields innumerable images from across the world, it’s difficult to imagine being entirely reliant on verbal or literary descriptions of those images. Vincent van Gogh alluded to this difficulty when writing to his sister, Willemien, about his first encounter with impressionism in Paris in 1886: “People have heard of the Impressionists, they have great expectations of them. . . . And when they see them for the first time they’re bitterly, bitterly disappointed and find them careless, ugly, badly painted, badly drawn, bad in color, everything that’s miserable. That was my first impression, too, when I came to Paris with the ideas of [Anton] Mauve and [Jozef] Israëls and other clever painters.”1 Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, Arles, between June 16 and June 20, 1888, Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition, ed. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, 6 vols. (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2009), no. 626. Despite his initial disappointment, Van Gogh may have been encouraged to take another look at the French impressionists’ work by his brother Theo, who dealt in these paintings for Boussod, Valadon et cie. Vincent van Gogh quickly learned to appreciate the modern, colorful, and loosely painted compositions of the French impressionists. The recognizable style and palette of his most celebrated paintings would be indebted to them.
Among his fellow Dutch artists and art critics, Van Gogh was exceptional in both his praise of the impressionists and his thorough knowledge of the style. Parisian correspondents writing for the Dutch press typically shared the painter’s initial revulsion. Compared with Van Gogh’s eventual appreciation, however, hardly any of those critics moved beyond their initial condemnation. As this essay details, the Dutch public was introduced to the term “impressionism” and the associated artworks via disapproving and mostly unillustrated reviews. This essay explores both the ways the term “impressionism” came to be used in the Netherlands, and how critics’ attitudes shifted toward the domestic painting they identified as “impressionist.”
Roughly one year after Louis Leroy mockingly labeled Claude Monet and his fellow artists as the “impressionists” in his review of the 1874 Société anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs exhibition, Dutch readers were introduced to the term in a review of the 1875 Paris Salon printed in the daily Algemeen Handelsblad: “If the ‘perfectionnists’ [sic] accept it as axiomatic that talent, indeed even skill and patience, are enough to create a painting without an idea being necessary for it, the ‘Impressionnists’ [sic] go much further still. They are unconcerned with the idea, which in their eyes is nothing more than unnecessary ballast, but they also declare that patience and skill are things that likewise mean nothing. . . . In fact, their highest ambition is nothing less than to make as little work as possible of their paintings. They aspire only to give a general impression and to leave the rest of the work to the viewers’ imagination, to search for the meaning of the painting by mentally filling in what is missing.”2 Louis Leroy, “Exposition des impressionistes,” Le charivari, April 25, 1874, in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874–1904: Sources and Documents, ed. Linda Nochlin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966), 10–14; H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen V (slot),” Algemeen Handelsblad, June 30, 1875: “Nemen de ‘perfectionnisten’ [sic] als een axioma aan, dat talent, ja zelfs vaardigheid en geduld voldoende zijn om een schilderstuk te scheppen zonder dat een gedachte daarvoor noodig is, de ‘impressionnisten’ [sic] gaan nog veel verder. Ook zij bemoeien zich niet met de gedachte, die ook in hun oog niet meer is dan een nuttelooze ballast, maar zij verklaren bovendien dat geduld en vaardigheid dingen zijn, die even goed niets beteekenen. . . . Hun hoogste streven is inderdaad geen ander dan zoo weinig mogelijk werk van hun schilderstukken te maken. Zij willen enkel het algemeen effect aanduiden en aan de verbeelding der toeschouwers de rest van het werk overlaten, namelijk de beteekenis der schilderij op te sporen, door er bij te denken wat daaraan ontbreekt.” This translation and all other translations of Dutch art reviews are by Diane Webb. Strikingly, this review was not written by a Dutch correspondent residing in Paris but by the French art historian Henri Havard. An expert in Dutch art, Havard had conducted extensive research in the Netherlands, where he lived for several years after being forced into exile from France due to his participation in the 1871 Paris Commune. He acted as correspondent for Le siècle and Le temps, and he published regularly in French periodicals such as the Gazette des beaux-arts and Le Monde illustré.3 In addition, Havard’s many publications include: L’art et les artistes hollandais, 4 vols. (Paris: A. Quantin, 1879–81); Histoire de la peinture hollandaise (Paris: A. Quantin, 1882); and Van der Meer de Delft (Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1889). Yet Havard’s five-part review of the 1875 Salon included such meticulous descriptions of the exhibition atmosphere and displayed artworks, while being clearly written for a Dutch public, that he must have been present. It is very unlikely his review was a mere translation of a French article by another writer. Havard’s views on contemporary art were shared by his Dutch colleagues: he favored academic art.4 Rossella Froissart Pezone, Notice d’Henri Havard, October 13, 2008, https://bit.ly/3fO0B3B. Consequently, Havard was an appropriate correspondent for the Algemeen Handelsblad, an important national daily in the late nineteenth-century Netherlands.
The quoted review followed an extensive discussion in which Havard had used the key terms “perfectionist” and “impressionist” to describe two distinct but, to him, substandard groups of artists. Although different in style and technique, the groups shared one deplorable quality: their paintings lacked substance. Havard, believing “the art of painting was a language designed to express ideas,” denounced both the perfectionists and the impressionists for not painting ideas.5 H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen IV,” Algemeen Handelsblad, June 19, 1875.
Among the perfectionists was Marie-François Firmin-Girard, whose Le jardin de la marraine (1875) demonstrated manual and artistic skill but no real thought. While Havard did not identify particular “impressionists,” he probably had in mind Eugène Boudin, who exhibited two views of the port of Bordeaux in that year’s Paris Salon.6 The work was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on May 5, 2011, lot 39. An even more likely target of Havard’s vitriol was Édouard Manet’s Argenteuil, which had been completed during the summer of 1874, when Manet was surrounded by many of the French impressionists (fig. 1).7 See Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux, Les catalogues des salons des beaux-arts XI, 1875–1877 (Dijon: Echelle de Jacob, 2006), Salon de 1875, cats. 266, 267, 1412; François Cachin, Charles S. Moffett, and Juliet Wilson Bareau, Manet 1832–1883 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1983), 353–55; Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin, Eugène Boudin (Honfleur: Musée Eugène Boudin, 1992), 226; Carol Armstrong, Manet Manette (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 210–22. Painted in bold, quickly applied daubs of unsaturated color, this scene of contemporary bourgeois leisure stylistically resembles impressionist paintings by Monet and his contemporaries. Havard maintained ties to professional and personal networks in his home country even while in exile, and, as he probably visited the 1875 Salon, he was undoubtedly aware of the scandal this painting caused. Indeed, his comments about unspecified impressionists echo what his Parisian colleagues wrote about Manet’s submission. For instance, a review in L’illustration, which was also available in the Netherlands, noted that “a painting of this kind should . . . be seen from a distance of one or two feet, else it is merely a sketch, a shapeless rough draft, and has no business being in a public exhibition.”8 Francion, L’illustration, May 29, 1875, quoted in George Heard Hamilton, Manet and His Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 191. In an advertisement of Amsterdam bookstore “B. H. de Ronden,” published in Algemeen Dagblad, August 29, 1871, is to be read they had one reader’s copy of L’illustration, among many other French and English periodicals. Evaluations such as this likely shaped Havard’s characterization of the impressionists as sloppy, hasty, and untrained artists who forced viewers to decide what their compositions represented.
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Description: Argenteuil by Manet, Edouard
Fig. 1. Édouard Manet, Argenteuil, 1874. Oil on canvas, 149 × 115 cm (58 11/16 × 45 1/4 in.). Musée des beaux-arts, Tournai.
Yet, as Havard was not only troubled by the sketchiness of these paintings, his diatribes echoed established and tradition-bound Dutch art critics, who uniformly deemed substance, content, or narrative mandatory for the production of quality art.9 Lieske Tibbe, Verstrengeling van traditie en vernieuwing 1885–1905. Kunstkritiek in Nederland tijdens het fin de siècle (Rotterdam: nai010 uitgevers, 2014), 23–24; H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen I,” Algemeen Handelsblad, May 22, 1875. Thus, critics, whether from France or the Netherlands, were bound to react strongly to a loosely painted scene of contemporary life such as Manet’s Argenteuil.
Havard’s negative review helped shape the subsequent Dutch response to art deemed “impressionist.” From then on, critics reporting in the Dutch press on the latest developments in Paris would adopt the same tone in their respective discussions of the impressionists, regardless of whether that label referred to Manet, Monet, Camille Pissarro, or other artists who handled their paint in a sketchy manner. There was no French–Dutch alliance on the progressive side of the spectrum to counter these negative reviews; until 1885 a press outlet sympathetic to impressionism did not even exist in the Netherlands.10 In 1885 the magazine De Nieuwe Gids was founded, for which a new generation of avant-garde artists, poets, and authors wrote. See Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 32. As a result, the Dutch press almost always failed to discuss the use of color, the instantaneousness, and the contemporaneity of impressionism. Dutch reviews instead disseminated a wide array of characterizations that, at their core, were uniformly concerned with lack of finish and content. Because these reviews never included reproductions of the new “impressionist” works—hardly any reviews of the time were illustrated—Dutch audiences relied on words alone to understand impressionism. Following Havard’s review, the term “impressionism” would be most frequently used in the Netherlands to describe “vague” works of art—vague no doubt to the readers as well, who could not see them.
REPORTS FROM PARIS
Subsequent to Havard’s 1875 comments on the “impressionists” at the Salon, the Dutch press reported on the Second Impressionist Exhibition in which Edgar Degas, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley all participated. Manet did not show his work there. In two reviews, the conservative Dutch arts magazine De Kunstbode provided relatively extensive accounts of the works on display. In one, an anonymous critic connected the 1876 exhibition explicitly to the term “impressionism.” For his terminology, this critic seems to have consulted the Paris reviews, where the term had already started to be used with some frequency.11 Just by reading headlines, one would have come across the terms quite often. For instance: Émile Blémont, “Les impressionnistes,” Le rappel, April 9, 1876; Simon Boubée, “Beaux-Arts: Exposition des impressionists, chez Durant Ruel,” Gazette de France, April 5, 1876; Jules Castagnary, “Salon de 1876: Premier Article: Les Impressionistes: MM. Claude Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Caillebotte, Mlle Morizot,” Le siècle, May 6, 1876; Victor Cherbuliez, “Le Salon de 1876: Les Impressionistes, les tableaux de genre et les portraits,” Revue des deux mondes, June 1, 1876; Émile Pocheron, “Les impressionistes,” Le soleil, April 4, 1876. All in Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886: Documentation (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996), 2:45–113. Without naming specific artists, he referred to “a new sect” known as “le groupe des impressionistes [sic]” exhibiting at Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery, commenting that “the aim appears to be mainly to let the viewer think a great deal. It seems to me, however, that these gentlemen actually demand rather a lot of that viewer, because it is almost impossible to tell whether the painter intended to depict animals, trees, people, or whatever.”12 “Uit Parijs, 15 mei 1876,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 3, no. 11 (June 1876): 81–82: “Het doel daarbij schijnt vooral te zijn, den toeschouwer veel te laten denken. 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.” Once more, the critic’s main complaint was that these painters had neglected to finish their compositions, making it extremely difficult for viewers to discern what the canvases depicted. This argument and the pejorative use of “impressionism” recalled Havard’s 1875 review.
In the second Kunstbode review, the critic Marcellus Emants described several of the paintings by the named participating artists, albeit without dubbing them “impressionists.” Nevertheless, Emants demonstrated how fiercely Dutch critics disapproved of French impressionism. In addition to art criticism, Emants wrote naturalist novels along the lines of those by Émile Zola. But whereas Zola defended his French impressionist friends, Emants’s views on art were steeped in tradition.13 Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 23–24. He shared Havard’s opinion that a work of art should necessarily possess a clear narrative and intellectual depth. In his article, misleadingly titled “The Salon des refusés,” Emants dismissively described the approach of individual artists. He criticized Monet for his fiery palette: “Mr. Monet paints fire-red and sky-blue ships with bright yellow masts, blue-green trees, yellow houses, and chrome yellow duckweed on ultramarine water.” Sisley “sticks a few gray cobwebs on a gray ground, and proclaims this fine thing to be a winter scene.” Meanwhile, Morisot, “surely an emancipated lady—so lustily wields lumps of paint that it’s often impossible to say whether this or that dirty smudge is supposed to indicate a human being, a beast, or a lifeless object.”14 Marcellus Emants, “‘De Salon des refusés’ te Parijs,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 3, no. 10 (May 1876): 75–76: “Mijnheer Monet schildert vuurroode en hemelsblauwe schepen met hooggele masten, blauwgroene boomen, gele huizen en chromaatkleurig kroost op ultramarijn-water. Denkelijk had hij zich juist nieuwe verven aangeschaft, toen hem ‘t denkbeeld inviel van de schelste kleuren eenige kladden op een doek neer te werpen . . . Sisley—een ridder van den grijzen dag !—plakt eenige grauwe spinnewebben op een grauw fond neer, en verkondigt, dat dit moois een wintergezicht is. . . . Juffrouw Bertha Morissot [sic] eindelijk—stellig een geëmancipeerde dame—klontert er zoo lustig op los, dat ‘t vaak onmogelijk is te zeggen, of deze of gene vuile vlek een mensch, een beest, of een levenloos voorwerp moet aanduiden.” Identification of paintings illustrated under nos. 1 and 2 on the basis of Berson, New Painting, 2:58, 2:64. This ironic reference to the “emancipation” of Morisot reveals his disapproval of “modernity.” He further lambasted Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro, all of whom, he claimed, had deleteriously neglected the rules of anatomy, used incorrect colors, and produced incoherent landscapes. Clearly, their works were so beyond what Emants considered acceptable that he could only react with outright hostility.
Emants concluded his essay by chastising this supposed “L’art de l’avenir” as the direct contradiction of what art should be: the visual representation of meaning. He was appalled by these impressionist works in their “boundless worship of sudden impressions, flung onto the canvas with no commonsensical restraint and immediately labeled a work of art.”15 Emants, “De Salon des refusés,” 75–76: “een onbegrensde vereering van plotselinge indrukken, die zonder enige verstandscontrole op ’t doek worden gesmeten en terstond tot kunstwerk bestempeld [worden].” Underlying his review was a desire to prevent the encroachment of impressionism in the Netherlands. Compared with the hostility directed at the French impressionists, Emants heralded artists such as Ernest Hébert or Gustave Moreau.16 Marcellus Emants, “De Haagsche tentoonstelling van schilderijen,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 2, no. 11 (June 1875): 81–84. Evidently, Emants accepted some French influences—an indication that his screeds against impressionism cannot be reduced to nationalist diatribes.
Dutch art critics persisted in their disapproval of subsequent exhibitions by the French impressionists. Shorter newspaper articles condemned these artists for their lack of finish. About the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition, the Algemeen Handelsblad critic remarked in response to works by Monet, Pissarro, Degas, and Mary Cassatt: “It is impossible to see anything more fantastical, more bizarre, more exaggerated—to the point that one asks oneself if one hasn’t suddenly been put in the consulting room of a lunatic asylum.”17 “Frankrijk: Het leven te Parijs,” Algemeen Handelsblad, April 21, 1879: “Het is onmogelijk iets meer fantastisch, zonderlingers, overdreveners te zien. Het is om zich af te vragen of men niet eensklaps in de spreekkamer van een Lunatic-asylum verplaatst is.” A review of the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition remarked that “so-called ‘Impressionists’ are deranged Zolas of painting, daubing all manner of ordinary figures in a monstrous way on the canvas.”18 “Gemengd Nieuws,” Het nieuws van den dag, April 22, 1880: “De . . . zogenaamde ‘Impressionisten’ zijn ontaarde Zola’s der schilderkunst en kladden allerlei alledaagsche figuren op monsterachtige wijze op het doek.”
Dutch readers then received a uniformly negative appraisal of impressionism from 1875 onward.19 See Berson, New Painting, vol. 1. Even though correspondents working for the Dutch press may have been aware of debates in the French press—in which the term “impressionism” was not limited to negative connotations—they continued to consistently condemn this art. Only in 1883 would the Dutch public be able to view French impressionist paintings in person, when Durand-Ruel sent a number of yet unidentified works by, among others, Pissarro, Monet, and Sisley to an artist’s society and art gallery in Rotterdam named De Kunstclub. The exhibition, which then traveled to Berlin, London, and Boston, attracted no press coverage in The Netherlands.20 Malika M’rani Alaoui and Jenny Reynaerts, “George Henrik Breitner: Rambling and Responding,” in The Dutch in Paris, 1789–1914, ed. M. Jonkman (Bussum: THOTH, 2017), 157. Three years later the Hague branch of Goupil et cie displayed five works by Monet in its showroom, including one that it stationed in the gallery window.21 See Haagsche Courant, September 8, 1886: “Voor het middenraam van de firma Goupil en Co. op de Plaats is deze week een schilderij tentoongesteld: ‘bij Monte Carlo,’ van den Franschen schilder Claude Monet.” None of these works found a Dutch buyer, however, and they were all returned to Boussod, Valadon et cie in Paris.22 In the stockbooks of The Hague branch of Goupil, five paintings by Monet are listed in 1886: Les fonds de Varengeville; La débâcle (glaces); Environs de Monte Carlo; Palmiers de Bordighera; and Falaises d’Étretat. Archive RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) inv. NL-HaRKD.0355.
Monet himself had visited the Netherlands on various occasions starting in 1871. He painted dozens of Dutch landscapes with the same coarse, bravura brushwork and unsaturated colors used in his French landscapes. Undoubtedly, Monet’s paintings were the most modern depictions of the Netherlands of the time, certainly in comparison with landscapes painted by local artists. Yet he did not exhibit any of his colorful, luminous works such as The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal), in the Netherlands during these trips (fig. 2).23 A. H. Huussen, Jr., “Claude Monet in Nederland,” in Monet in Holland, ed. Louis van Tilborgh (Zwolle: Waanders, 1986), 36–46.
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Description: The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal) by Monet, Claude
Fig. 2. Claude Monet, The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal), c. 1874. Oil on canvas, 54.5 × 65.4 cm (21 7/16 × 25 3/4 in.). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1921.
IMPRESSIONISM COMES TO THE NETHERLANDS
As misleading as the Dutch press may have been, their reports did lead to the emergence of a local interpretation of the term “impressionism.” Despite critics such as Emants who attempted to keep “impressionism” out of the Netherlands, many journalists were convinced that impressionism had been infiltrating Dutch art since the late 1870s, when local artists began to loosely apply their paint to canvas.
A review that appeared as early as November 1876, on the occasion of an exhibition of the Amsterdam-based contemporary art society Arti et Amicitiae, alludes to this phenomenon: “Just as we get fashions from Paris, so, too, new trends in art there are gradually introduced here. This is also the case with the so-called ‘gray school.’ The desire to see everything in gray, preferably—the glorification of nature in light or heavy mourning, instead of cheerful sunshine and sparkling colors—came from France. Just like the ever increasing tendency to pass off paintings that are little more than rather successful sketches.”24 “Tentoonstelling van schilderijen in Arti et Amicitiae (II),” Algemeen Handelsblad, November 9, 1876: “Evenals wij de modes uit Parijs krijgen, zoo wordt ook iedere nieuwe richting op kunstgebied aldaar van lieverlede hier ingevoerd. Met de dusgenaamde ‘grijze school’ is dit ook het geval. De lust om alles bij voorkeur in het grijs te zien; de verheerlijking der natuur in lichten of zwaren rouw, in plaats van vroolijken zonneschijn en tintelende kleuren, is afkomstig uit Frankrijk. Eveneens de steeds toenemende neiging om voor schilderijen te doen doorgaan, wat niet veel meer dan welgelukte schetsen zijn.” The term “gray school” referred to Hague School artists, including Jacob and Willem Maris, Mauve, and Israëls.25 Jeroen Kapelle, “Oosterbeek, Amsterdam, Den Haag,” in Anton Mauve 1838–1888, ed. Saskia de Bodt and Michiel Plomp (Bussum: THOTH, 2009), 63. The article recognized French art—without identifying specific artists—as the source of the Dutch artists’ gray and tonal palettes and went on to distinguish the Hague School artists from the celebrated “great masters” of the Dutch Golden Age. In so doing, the critic used the term “gray Impressionists” with specific reference to Mauve’s practice of painting in “blurred patches of color.”26 “Tentoonstelling van schilderijen in Arti et Amicitiae (II),” Algemeen Handelsblad, November 9, 1876: “Bij onze groote meesters zien we ten minste wanneer men hun schilderijen meer nadert, dat een boom een boom, een schaap een schaap blijft. Bij de grijze impressionisten is dat geheel anders. Neem tot voorbeeld een in vele opzichten voortreffelijk doek, ‘In de duinen’ van Mauve; . . . Op grooten afstand is het licht en bruin over die massa voldoende verdeeld, om er schapen in te onderscheiden; gij nadert, en ziet niets dan embryons van dieren, vage massa’s.”
Even though the critic used the word “gray” to characterize the specific tonality of Mauve’s work, the connection between impressionism and the Hague School had thus been made—this despite Dutch artists owing more to the Barbizon School than French impressionism. Their use of color was tonal, and they aimed to portray the picturesque qualities of the Netherlands and the Dutch way of life. Infused with a romanticism that drew on the Dutch Golden Age, their subjects evoked a sentimental appreciation for nature.27 Benno Tempel and Frouke van Dijke, “Poëtisch realisme. De Haagse School en het Hollandse landschap,” in Holland op z’n mooist. Op pad met de Haagse School, ed. Benno Tempel (Zwolle: WBooks, 2015), 37–56. All signs of modernity were omitted from their compositions.28 Jenny Reynaerts, “Die Esthetik der Polderlandschaft,” in Der weite Blick, ed. Jenny Reynearts (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008), 43. Mauve’s On the Heath near Laren was painted with broad brushstrokes in a subdued and limited palette; the light-gray sky and the brownish land present the only strong contrast in the picture (fig. 3). No juxtapositions of complementary colors—a technique so often seen in impressionist paintings—are visible. The location appears untouched by modernity, without even traces of fences or paved roads. While On the Heath near Laren may resemble paintings by the French impressionists in its broad handling of paint, it otherwise demonstrated more formal resonance with the methods of Barbizon School artists such as Charles-François Daubigny, Camille Corot, and Jean-François Millet.29 Emke Raassen-Kruimel, “Mauve en de schilders van Laren,” in De Bodt and Plomp, Anton Mauve, 102.
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Description: On the Heath near Laren by Mauve, Aton
Fig. 3. Anton Mauve, On the Heath near Laren, 1887. Oil on canvas on panel, 77 × 104 cm (30 5/16 × 40 15/16 in.). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Though understandings of impressionism in the Netherlands may seem muddled, it has to be remembered that Paris art reviewers also trafficked in highly disparate definitions of “impressionism” into the early twentieth century. When French critics asserted that Barbizon artists were part of the “School of the Impression,” Dutch correspondents may have become confused about the appropriate application of this term and then applied it to Hague School artists such as Mauve and Willem Maris.30 Lynne Ambrosini, “‘Leader of the School of the Impression’ Daubigny and His Legacy,” in Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape, ed. Lynne Ambrosini, Frances Fowle, and Maite van Dijk (Cincinnati: Taft Art Museum, 2016), 31. An 1877 review of an exhibition mounted by the Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij (Dutch Drawing Society) demonstrates how erroneous definitions spread: “When one speaks of the Impressionists, anyone who follows this artistic movement automatically thinks of W. Maris and Mauve.”31 “Tweede tentoonstelling van tekeningen door de leden der Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij te ’s Gravenhage (slot),” Algemeen Handelsblad, August 15, 1877: “Wanneer men van de impressionisten spreekt, denkt een ieder, die deze beweging op kunstgebied volgt, onwillekeurig aan W. Maris en Mauve.”
THE HAGUE SCHOOL AS IMPRESSIONISM
In time it became common practice to describe Hague School artists as “impressionists.” Interestingly, Dutch criticism of these artists was not as negative as the reports of mainstream French impressionism, even though there were various conservative adversaries. The Hague School did not set out to rebel against the establishment. This was predominantly because many of the artists were members of the artist society Pulchri Studio, which brought together practicing artists and wealthy art-loving members. As the Pulchri Studio provided a steady clientele for the Hague School artists, many of them became successful and well established shortly after becoming members.32 See Saskia de Bodt, “Pulchri Studio: Het imago van een kunstenaarsvereniging in de negentiende eeuw,” De Negentiende eeuw 12, no. 1 (January 1990): 24–42.
Many of the painters belonging to this group visited Paris and Barbizon in the 1850s and 1860s and subsequently were inspired by landscapes rendered in more broadly applied paint, such as those by Théodore Rousseau. Following the lead of Hague School artists Willem Roelofs, Jacob Maris, and Jozef Israëls, a new generation of Dutch artists adopted loose brushstrokes and tonal palettes. According to Gerard Bilders, an artist important to the development of the style, the search for “colored gray” and “the sentiment in gray” was central to their approach, as may be seen in their depictions of the rural surroundings of The Hague and the dunes bordering the sea.33 Gerard Bilders to Johannes Kneppelhout, July 10, 1860, in Wiepke Loos, Gekleurd Grijs. Johannes Kneppelhout (1814–1885) en Gerard Bilders (1838–1865). Brieven en dagboek (Zwolle: Waanders, 2009), 263–64. Their landscapes captured the atmosphere and mood of these places and thereby evidenced a sentimental affection for the pre-industrial Dutch landscape.34 See John Sillevis, “De Haagse school. Sentiment van het alledaagse,” in Tempel, Holland op z’n mooist, 7–36.
The Hague School gained acceptance over the course of the 1870s. By 1880 there was a market for these artists both at home and abroad. Many contemporary reviews of this art were favorable, even though “impressionism” soon found its way into the vocabulary of the champions of the Hague School. For instance, the critic Jacques van Santen-Kolff, a well-known supporter of the Hague School who coined that very term, described one of the lesser-known artists associated with the group, Fredericus Jacobus van Rossum du Chattel, as “a full-blooded and extremely healthy Impressionist, as a sect of so-called ‘realists’ are called nowadays in France” (fig. 4).35 Jacques van Santen-Kolff, “Een nationale vereering ter bevordering der waterverfteekenkunst. De Hollansche Teekenmaatschappij en haar tweede tentoonstelling,” De Banier 3, no. 1 (1877): 417–99: “Een volbloed en uiterst gezond Impressionist zoals tegenwoordig in Frankrijk een secte der zogenaamde ‘realisten’ wordt genoemd.” Earlier, in an 1875 essay on the Hague School, Van Santen-Kolff had discussed the “healthy realism” of these artists, using the adjective “healthy” to describe their ability to combine truth and poetics within landscape painting. He further praised them for going beyond slavishly copying after reality.36 Jacques van Santen-Kolff, “Een blik in de Hollandsche schilderschool onzer dager,” De Banier 1, no. 3 (1875): 159.
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Description: View of a River Near Rotterdam by Chattel, Frederik Jacobus van Rossum du
Fig. 4. Fredericus Jacobus van Rossum du Chattel, View of a River Near Rotterdam, n.d. Oil on canvas, 90 × 140.5 cm (35 7/16 × 55 5/16 in.). Courtesy of Simonis & Buunk, Ede.
In extolling Du Chattel’s “healthy” impressionism, Van Santen-Kolff hinted that the painter could choose which elements of nature he wished to depict, and which he wished to relinquish, as a means of depicting it as beautifully as possible. While not naming the French realists who comprised this “sect,” he was likely alluding to the Barbizon School. In associating Du Chattel’s work with French realism, Van Santen-Kolff not only meant to emphasize the subjectivity of the work but also its modernity. This was in line with the Dutch consensus that all new developments came from France. It was this modern subjectivity—the inventiveness and even originality—in Du Chattel’s art that Van Santen-Kolff connected to the term “impressionism.” Partly as a result of reviews like Van Santen-Kolff’s, impressionism came to be understood as a subjective art, not merely connected to the recording of an optically perceived reality.
The idea that impressionism expressed an artist’s subjectivity or originality resonated with other critics, as evidenced by an 1888 obituary for Mauve: “That he [Mauve] was an Impressionist, that he reproduced the effect the landscape had on his artist’s soul, that he mainly portrayed the poetry of that landscape, was reckoned by many to be a fault of his. But those reproofs did not make him hesitate or waver.”37 “Kunst en letteren,” Maasbode, February 15, 1888: “Dat hij impressionist was; dat hij den indruk, door het landschap op zijne kunstenaarsziel te weeg gebracht, dat hij vooral de poëzie van dat landschap weergaf, werd hem door velen als eene fout toegerekend. Maar die verwijten deden hem niet aarzelen of wankelen.” Like Van Santen-Kolff’s article, this obituary emphasized subjectivity, poetry, and artistic intervention in its praise of Mauve’s impressionism. When these two texts are read against the 1870s reviews discussed above, it becomes clear that “impressionism” had become a polysemous label with both positive and negative connotations. Compared to the author of Mauve’s obituary, the conservative critic David van der Kellen, Jr., could continue to denounce Willem Maris: “‘The rainy day’ by W. Maris is truly impressionistic, but I believe that few will be able to like it. Even though a feeling for color cannot be denied, it is a confused mass and a sky that seems to consist of shingles.”38 David van der Kellen, Jr., “De driejaarlijksche Tentoonstelling van Kunstwerken van levende Meesters te ’s Gravenhage,” Het nieuws van den Dag, May 28, 1884: “‘De buiige dag’ van W. Maris, is recht impressionistisch, doch zal geloof ik weinigen kunnen bevallen. Al is gevoel voor kleur niet te ontkennen, ’t is een verwarde massa en een lucht alsof ze uit vellen bestond.” Van der Kellen defined the “impressionistic” aspect of Maris’s work as the lack of order in his composition. Ironically, though Van der Kellen praises Maris’s use of color, the artist’s tonal palette would be precisely what separated his style from that of the French impressionists.
GEORGE HENDRIK BREITNER AND ISAAC ISRAELS AS IMPRESSIONISTS
As Dutch definitions of “impressionism” led critics to cast the work of Hague School artists in either a favorable or an unfavorable light, other emerging artists applying their paint in broad and thick strokes were also dubbed “impressionists.” This was the case with two artists loosely associated with a younger generation of painters based in Amsterdam, alternately called “De Tachtigers” or the “Amsterdam School”: George Hendrik Breitner and Isaac Israels.39 See Frouke van Dijke, “Voorsteden en achterbuurten. De sensatie van de stad,” in Rumoer in de Stad. De schilders van Tachtig, ed. Benno Tempel and Frouke van Dijke (Zwolle: WBooks, 2017), 8–26.
Both artists began their careers in The Hague, where they studied under the older generation—Breitner with Willem and Jacob Maris, Isaac Israels (who elected to spell his family’s name without the diaeresis over the e) with his father, Jozef. In the second half of the 1880s, they moved to Amsterdam to concentrate on depicting urban subjects and partake in its bustling city life.40 For Breitner, see Jan Veth, “Biografische aanteekeningen,” in George Hendrik Breitner, ed. Adriaan Pit, Willem Steenhof, Jan Veth, and Willem Vogelsang (Amsterdam: Scheltema en Holkema, 1902), 121; for Israels, see Anna Wagner, Isaac Israels (Venlo: Van Spijk, 1985), 23. There they quickly joined a group of writers, poets, and artists inspired by French naturalist authors such as Zola, who had written about the everyday lives of the urban working classes.41 Wagner, Israëls, 23. As Breitner and Israels became more involved with this group, they moved away from the sentimental landscape art of their teachers and focused on contemporary scenes.42 Richard Bionda and Carel Blotkamp, “Inleiding,” in De schilders van Tachtig. Nederlandse schilderkunst 1880–1895, ed. Bionda and Blotkamp (Zwolle: Waanders, 1991), 13–14. Although this shift brought Breitner and Israels closer to the French impressionists, their respective palettes remained dark and tonal, as may be seen in Breitner’s The Rokin (fig. 5). Breitner’s tonal colors emphasized the gloomy atmosphere and overcast skies typical of Amsterdam. In comparison, Monet’s The Zuiderkerk, painted roughly fifteen years earlier, heightened the vibrant contrast between the blue of sky and water and the bright yellow of house facades bathed in sunlight (see fig. 2).
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Description: The Rokin by Breitner, George Hendrik
Fig. 5. George Hendrik Breitner, The Rokin, c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 62.5 × 101.5 cm (24 5/8 × 39 15/16 in.). Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.
Despite those differences in approach, Breitner’s and Israels’s coarse handling of paint was enough for critics to refer to their work as “impressionist.” For instance, Het nieuws van den dag described the horses in Breitner’s Resting Cavalry in a Square (c. 1885) as a “brown-black mass.” Breitner’s combination of a dark color with a “mean” blue to indicate the cavalrymen in their raincoats seemed equally troublesome to the critic. The latter used the term “impressionistic” to condemn the painting’s lack of finish, concluding that “except for the hindquarters of the first horse, no one will discover anything beautiful in it.”43 “De Tentoonstelling van Teekeningen in de kunstzalen der Maatschappij Arti et Amicitiae (III),” Het nieuws van den Dag, November 11, 1886: “Breitner is in N°. 23 ‘halte’ weer vreeselijk impressionistisch geweest. . . . Men ontwaart een bruine zwarte massa, dit zijn de paarden, waartusschen hier en daar eenige vegen gemeen blauw, die de regenmantels van de huzaren moeten verbeelden. Behalve het achtergedeelte van het eerste paard, zal niemand hierin iets schoons kunnen ontdekken.” Critics continued to perpetuate this evaluation of Breitner and Israels well into the 1890s. A. C. Loffelt wrote of the work Israels exhibited in 1897: “Israels, an Amsterdam canal with figures in the late evening, not so impressionistically sloppy as before. The houses even stand rather sturdily on their piles.”44 Anton Cornelis Loffelt, “Tentoonstelling der Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij te ’s Gravenhage (IV),” Het nieuws van den Dag, September 4, 1897: “Israëls een Amsterdamsch grachtje met figuren bij laten avond, niet zoo impressionistisch slordig als vroeger. De huizen staan zelfs vrij stevig op hun palen.”
As with the Hague School, some commentators used “impressionism” or “impressionist” to positively characterize Breitner’s and Israels’s work.45 Carel Blotkamp, “Kunstenaars als critici. Kunstkritiek in Nederland, 1880–1895,” in Bionda and Blotkamp, De schilders van Tachtig, 79–80. In an extensive review of the triannual exhibition of paintings at the Rijksmuseum, Maurits van der Valk wrote about Breitner’s majestic In the Dunes (now called The Yellow Riders, 1885–86): “One of the best paintings of what one calls the impressionistic school is certainly Breitner’s ‘In the Dunes,’ a painting which, through its delicacy of color, its accuracy in the tonal values, and the vibrancy produced by the powerful personality it betrays, may easily be considered one of the best paintings in the exhibition.”46 J. Stemming (Maurits van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling van schilderijen,” De Amsterdammer (daily), October 13, 1886: “Een van de beste schilderijen, van wat men noemt de impressionistische school, is zeker wel In het Duin, van Breitner, een schilderij die door de fijnheid van kleur, juistheid in de waarde der tonen, der bewegingen van het effect door de krachtige persoonlijkheid die er uit spreekt, gerust onder de beste der tentoonstelling gerangschikt kan worden.” Indeed, in the work, Breitner successfully used coarse and violent brushwork to render the fierce movement of riders dashing through the sandy dunes. It was this brushwork that Van der Valk saw as communicating his “powerful personality.”
In his praise of Breitner, Van der Valk used the same connotations of “impressionism” as Van Santen-Kolff did. Van der Valk commended the artistic invention in Breitner’s “impressionist” work. When Dutch critics favorably applied the term “impressionism,” it indicated the subjectivity and personality they perceived in an artist’s work. This praise of subjectivity and originality resonates with Zola’s Salon critiques, in which he commended artists who conveyed their own perceptions or emotions in their paintings. For instance, writing about Johan Barthold Jongkind’s work, Zola observed: “He sees a landscape at a glance, in the reality of its ensemble, and he translates it in his way, by preserving the truth in it and by communicating the emotion he has felt.”47 Émile Zola, “Mon Salon. Les paysagistes,” L’evénement illustré 1, no. 59 (June 1868), repr. in Émile Zola, Écrits sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 215: “Il voit un paysage d’coup, dans la réalité de son ensemble, et il le traduit à sa façon, en en conservant la vérité et en lui communiquant l’émotion qu’il a ressentie.” Théodore Duret had similarly discussed Corot’s work in his Les peintres français en 1867, in which he described Corot as “a man of an essentially poetic nature” who did “not so much to reproduce what he saw as . . . communicate what he felt.”48 Théodore Duret, Les peintres français en 1867 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1867), 26: “Corot est un homme d’une nature essentiellement poétique”; “[il a pris le pinceau,] non point tant pour reproduire ce qu’il voyait, que pour communiquer ce qu’il sentait.” Van Santen-Kolff and Van der Valk likely had taken note of such commentary and decided to use the same concepts and language in their discussions of landscape painting. Although Zola did not use the term “impressionism” in 1868, Van Santen-Kolff and Van der Valk may have connected his earlier assertions to definitions of impressionism like those advanced by Jules-Antoine Castagnary, who, with the First Impressionist Exhibition, wrote that Monet and the others were “Impressionists in that they do not render a landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape.”49 Jules Castagnary, “Exposition du boulevard des Capucines: Les Impressionistes,” Le siècle, April 29, 1874.
A DUAL MEANING
Thus “impressionism” came to have a dual meaning in the Netherlands. On the one hand, the term connoted vagueness, sloppiness, and even lack of skill; on the other hand, it suggested subjectivity and originality. In the 1890s the former meaning became somewhat prevalent as the label “impressionism” started to be applied beyond the realm of contemporary art to the work of long-dead masters whose canvases displayed the same loose handling and similarly direct application of paint. For instance, an 1898 discussion of Rembrandt’s The Polish Rider (c. 1655) noted “the brazen painting of the gray horse, for which every color was used and which is painted—simply to use the word for once—just as impressionistically as a Breitner, which distinguished exhibition-goers nowadays stand in front of, shaking their heads.”50 “Van de Rembrandttentoonstelling (III),” Algemeen Handelsblad, October 6, 1898: “Door de brutale schildering van het grauwe paard, waarvoor alle kleuren gebruikt zijn en dat, om het woord maar eens te gebruiken, even impressionistisch geschilderd is, als een Breitner, waarnaar deftige tentoonstellingbezoekers nu schuddebollend staan te kijken.”
“Impressionism” even started to surface outside art criticism. In an article about the national budget, a journalist wrote, “As regards the social issue, we stand in front of an impressionistic artwork, in which the viewer is confronted with a riddle, not with an artwork that instantly gives him pleasure; everything is hazy, misty, dark.”51 “Staatsbegroting,” Algemeen Handelsblad, December 2, 1891: “Wat het maatschappelijk vraagstuk betreft, wij staan voor een impressionistisch kunstwerk, waarin de toeschouwer geplaatst wordt voor een raadsel, niet voor een kunstwerk dat hem onmiddellijk genot geeft; alles is wazig, nevelig, donker.” In addition to satirical uses such as this, in which “impressionism” was still connected to art, there were other reports in which it described phenomena completely unrelated to art. In these instances, it tended to refer to something impenetrable and incomprehensible. In one article, it was used to evoke the fog hanging over Amsterdam: “For a long time . . . our city has not looked so impressionistic as it did last week. The mist hung so thick and heavy over the canals and streets that it was sometimes difficult to discern a passerby.”52 “Gemengd Nieuws,” De Gooi- en Eemlander, February 28, 1891: “In langen tijd . . . heeft onze stad er niet zoo impressionistisch uitgezien als vorige week. De mist hing zoo dicht en zwaar over de grachten en straten, dat men soms moeite had een voorbijganger te onderscheiden.” Apparently, the Dutch definition of “impressionism”—initially referring to a vague, unfinished artwork—was applicable to any “ambiguous” phenomenon.
The second definition of “impressionism,” as subjective or original, did not appear outside art criticism. It was applied only to works in which the artist succeeded in presenting his personal impression of a phenomenon in external reality. The previously mentioned article by Van der Valk included a very good explanation of how such a definition of impressionism should be understood: “There has been much talking about and much swearing at the impressionists. They were the men who weren’t too particular about art, who passed off half-finished studies as paintings. . . . It’s time to take a different view of this. An impression is the feeling one gets of a piece of nature. . . . But not every artist gets the same feeling. . . . What he will try to portray with all the power and passion in him, depends entirely on his personality.”53 Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Veel is er gesproken over en veel gescholden op de impressionisten. Ze waren de mannen die het zo nauw niet namen met de kunst, die half afgewerkte studies gaven voor schilderijen, die niet konden tekenen, niet schilderen. Het wordt tijd dat men dit anders in gaat zien. Eene impressie is de indruk dien men op een gegeven moment ontvangt van een stuk natuur, onder de omstandigheden, zooals het zich dan, en dan alleen, voordoet. Niet elk kunstenaar nu krijgt een zelfden indruk, het hangt geheel van zijne persoonlijkheid, van zijn temperament af, wat hem het sterkst zal treffen, wat hij zal trachten weer te geven met alle kracht en hartstocht die in hem zijn, omdat hij het voelt in het diepst van zijne ziel.” Van der Valk thereby defined impressionism as an art in which the artist used his personal temperament to translate the reality he encountered onto the canvas. The artwork’s formal properties and the subject represented were one and the same.
In his discussion about the perception of the external world, Van der Valk made a pointed distinction between the abilities of artists and “ordinary” people.54 Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Een artist, dat is iemand die meer is dan een gewoon mensch, omdat hij door zijn fijne bewerktuiging meer gevoel en fantasie heeft.” Only artists could uncover the true “character” of the external world.55 Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Hem zal treffen het karakter dat er is in de vormen en hij zal ze weergeven met schoone lijnen die elk op zich zelf zeggen wat hij gevoeld heeft.” Van der Valk added that he deemed coarse brushstrokes like Breitner’s appropriate to capturing the impression of nature as it appeared before the artist, especially when the depicted subject involved motion: “Of course many will say to me: but the painting by Breitner isn’t finished, it isn’t completely worked out. . . . To which I reply: Indicating with a few, deeply expressive lines the action of the horse or the rider, so that it conveys life and gait and character, is of a higher order than following line for line, hair for hair, though it be ever so accurate—those details that one doesn’t really notice in a moving figure.”56 Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Nu zullen velen mij zeggen: maar de schilderij van Breitner is niet af, niet uitgewerkt . . . Daarop antwoord ik dit. Met enkele lijnen vol uitdrukking de actie van het paard of een ruiter aan te geven, zoodat er leven en gang en karakter in zit, staat hooger dan lijntje voor lijntje, haartje voor haartje te volgen, al is het nog zoo juist, die details welke men toch niet opmerkt bij een figuur in beweging.” Van der Valk did not perceive loose brushstrokes as the sole defining aspect of impressionism, but rather as a means of conveying the various features of those depicted in these paintings. Van der Valk’s insistence that impressionist paintings contained subjective content may be read as a response to Dutch critics such as Emants, who had dismissed impressionism as painting emptied of ideas.
Although most critics who used “impressionism” to describe subjective and poetic art admired loose brushstrokes, some conservative critics seemed to accept this explanation of the term as well, perhaps due to arguments such as those by Van der Valk. Joseph Alberdingk Thijm, professor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) and an art critic, repeated the type of rhetoric used by Emants. He, too, thought that form and content required balance. Additionally, he believed strongly in a hierarchy of genres in painting, in which the landscape occupied a low position. Nonetheless, in an 1883 review, after a lifetime of condemning any innovation in the arts, he conceded that, within the realm of landscape painting, something like a subjective approach to nature could exist without necessarily leading to poor quality. Subsequently, he acknowledged “impressionism” as the label for such art and proceeded to describe the work of Roelofs and Jacob Maris, both of whom had been painting landscapes in a loose style for at least fifteen years: “The latest trend in art, which one calls impressionism, focuses above all on portraying the artist’s mood. . . . The impressionism of our day . . . is naturally most closely connected with individualism.”57 Joseph Alberdingk Thijm, “Het Landschap op onze Ten-toon-stelling,” Algemeen Handelsblad, August 26, 1883: “De jongste kunstrichting, die men impressionisme noemt, maakt er vooral werk van, de stemming des kunstenaars te portretteren. . . . Het impressionisme van onze tijd . . . hangt met het individualisme natuurlijk ten engste samen.” Even though Thijm was a critic from a previous generation, his definition indicates that he accepted that put forth by Van der Valk and Van Santen-Kolff.
A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT
Clearly, what these critics meant by “impressionism” was different than the art of Monet and his contemporaries. In 1889 the prominent art critic Johan Gram penned an article in which he surveyed the art collection of Hendrik Willem Mesdag, which had recently opened as a private museum. Gram’s analysis perfectly sums up the Dutch understanding and use of “impressionism”: “Millet, in all his manifestations, Rousseau, and Daubigny are the household gods: the art on display here as well as in Mesdag’s museum is almost exclusively an ode to the new current, a plea for impressionism, for a broad and powerful approach.”58 Johan Gram, “Het Museum Mesdag,” Haagsche Stemmen 39 (1889): 477–87: “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 en krachtige opvatting.” Not only was the art of Millet, Rousseau, and Daubigny not impressionist, as the term came to be understood in France during the late 1870s, it also did not represent any new direction. By 1889 these Barbizon artists were all long dead, and even their successors, the French impressionists, were losing their avant-garde status.59 In 1888 Van Gogh dubbed the impressionists the “great Impressionists of the Grand Boulevard,” indicating they were all selling works at the dealers located at the principal boulevards of Paris. See Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, March 10, 1888, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 584. Dutch critics writing about domestic art, however, failed to follow the more recent developments in Paris, and this facilitated their alternative conception of the term “impressionism.” They thereby remained about three decades behind the assessments made by their French colleagues. Indeed, Gram’s words echoed the discussions surrounding Barbizon School painting that had been put forth in French art criticism as early as the 1850s and 1860s. This seeming lack of interest in the newest artistic innovations characterized not only Dutch correspondents but also Dutch “modern” artists such as Breitner and Israels. Both painters spent time in Paris, but their correspondence indicates barely any interest in impressionism, even though Israels stayed with Theo van Gogh, who made his reputation and income dealing in impressionist paintings.60 The only artists about whom Israels wrote were Manet, Jean-François Raffaëlli, and Henri Fantin-Latour. See Elsbeth Veldpape, Isaac Israels: Chroniqueur van het vlietende leven (Otterloo: Kröller-Müller Museum, 1999), 34. Breitner only mentioned Millet and Corot; see Paul Hefting, G. H. Breitner. Brieven aan A. P. Stolk (Utrecht: Haentjes Dekker en Gumbert, 1970), 57; Theo van Gogh to Vincent van Gogh, Paris, October 22, 1889, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 813.
The ambivalence of both Dutch critics and Dutch artists toward recent developments in the visual arts may be explained by their relative financial success. Because most artists sold well, there was little need to innovate.61 See John Sillevis, “De hoogtijdagen van de Haagse School (1870–1885),” in De Haagse School. Hollandse meesters van de 19 eeuw, ed. Ronald De Leeuw, John Sillevis, and Charles Dumas (Den Haag: Gemeentemuseum, 1983), 77–88; Renske Cohen Tervaert and Chris Stolwijk, “De ‘fabriek’: Anton Mauve en zijn handelaren,” in De Bodt and Plomp, Anton Mauve, 135–46. The younger Dutch artists did not feel a market-driven urgency to make radical new paintings in the way the French impressionists did. Since there was limited innovation in Dutch painting after 1870, art criticism also did not evolve.62 This stasis lasted until about 1891. In 1891 the Dutch author Frederik van Eeden wrote an influential article about Van Gogh, and in 1892 two exhibitions of his work were organized, as well as the avant-garde exhibitions Keuze-Tentoonstelling van Hedendaagse Nederlandsche Kunst and a second venue of Les XX. See Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 47–53. So when the term “impressionism” suddenly appeared in the vocabulary of Paris-based correspondents for Dutch newspapers, no one had the slightest idea that by the end of the 1870s, Parisian art critics were using the term consistently to describe the work of Monet and his likeminded associates. This lack of awareness meant that subsequent discrepancies in the Dutch definition and application of the term were not perceived as such. Because French impressionism failed to gain acceptance in the Netherlands and because only limited examples of it were shown, it was possible to divorce “impressionism” from its French conception.
Vincent van Gogh was aware of this when he wrote in 1888: “Mesdag and others have got to stop poking fun at the Impressionists.”63 Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, on or about February 27, 1888, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 580. In that year, Vincent and Theo endeavored to have a number of impressionist works exhibited at The Hague branch of Goupil et cie that would allow the Dutch public to learn about and therefore appreciate French impressionism.64 Richard Thomson, “Theo van Gogh: An Honest Broker,” in Theo van Gogh, 1857–1891: Art Dealer, Collector and Brother of Vincent, ed. Chris Stolwijk and Richard Thomson (Zwolle: Waanders, 1999), 201n90. Among these works were Degas’s A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (1865), a Belle-Île painting by Monet (either Rocks near Port-Coton, Le Lion, 1886; or Rocks near Port-Coton, 1886), and Pissarro’s Afternoon on the Meadow at Éragny (1887). Each painting was formally radical in its own way. The Degas had an asymmetrical composition; Monet’s works were high-keyed and very coarse in their handling of paint; and Pissarro’s work was completely new in its pointillism. Yet the Dutch failed to express any interest. All the impressionist paintings sent went unsold, and frustratingly the stock was returned to Paris.65 Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, Arles, between June 16 and June 20, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 626. Vincent and Theo van Gogh were the only ones among their fellow Dutchmen to appreciate French impressionist paintings. It was a bitter disappointment.
 
1      Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, Arles, between June 16 and June 20, 1888, Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition, ed. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, 6 vols. (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2009), no. 626. »
2      Louis Leroy, “Exposition des impressionistes,” Le charivari, April 25, 1874, in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874–1904: Sources and Documents, ed. Linda Nochlin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966), 10–14; H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen V (slot),” Algemeen Handelsblad, June 30, 1875: “Nemen de ‘perfectionnisten’ [sic] als een axioma aan, dat talent, ja zelfs vaardigheid en geduld voldoende zijn om een schilderstuk te scheppen zonder dat een gedachte daarvoor noodig is, de ‘impressionnisten’ [sic] gaan nog veel verder. Ook zij bemoeien zich niet met de gedachte, die ook in hun oog niet meer is dan een nuttelooze ballast, maar zij verklaren bovendien dat geduld en vaardigheid dingen zijn, die even goed niets beteekenen. . . . Hun hoogste streven is inderdaad geen ander dan zoo weinig mogelijk werk van hun schilderstukken te maken. Zij willen enkel het algemeen effect aanduiden en aan de verbeelding der toeschouwers de rest van het werk overlaten, namelijk de beteekenis der schilderij op te sporen, door er bij te denken wat daaraan ontbreekt.” This translation and all other translations of Dutch art reviews are by Diane Webb. »
3      In addition, Havard’s many publications include: L’art et les artistes hollandais, 4 vols. (Paris: A. Quantin, 1879–81); Histoire de la peinture hollandaise (Paris: A. Quantin, 1882); and Van der Meer de Delft (Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1889). »
4      Rossella Froissart Pezone, Notice d’Henri Havard, October 13, 2008, https://bit.ly/3fO0B3B. »
5      H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen IV,” Algemeen Handelsblad, June 19, 1875. »
6      The work was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on May 5, 2011, lot 39. »
7      See Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux, Les catalogues des salons des beaux-arts XI, 1875–1877 (Dijon: Echelle de Jacob, 2006), Salon de 1875, cats. 266, 267, 1412; François Cachin, Charles S. Moffett, and Juliet Wilson Bareau, Manet 1832–1883 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1983), 353–55; Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin, Eugène Boudin (Honfleur: Musée Eugène Boudin, 1992), 226; Carol Armstrong, Manet Manette (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 210–22. »
8      Francion, L’illustration, May 29, 1875, quoted in George Heard Hamilton, Manet and His Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 191. In an advertisement of Amsterdam bookstore “B. H. de Ronden,” published in Algemeen Dagblad, August 29, 1871, is to be read they had one reader’s copy of L’illustration, among many other French and English periodicals. »
9      Lieske Tibbe, Verstrengeling van traditie en vernieuwing 1885–1905. Kunstkritiek in Nederland tijdens het fin de siècle (Rotterdam: nai010 uitgevers, 2014), 23–24; H. H. [Henri Havard], “Het Parijsche Salon van 1875. Jaarlijksche Internationale tentoonstelling van Kunstvoorwerpen I,” Algemeen Handelsblad, May 22, 1875. »
10      In 1885 the magazine De Nieuwe Gids was founded, for which a new generation of avant-garde artists, poets, and authors wrote. See Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 32. »
11      Just by reading headlines, one would have come across the terms quite often. For instance: Émile Blémont, “Les impressionnistes,” Le rappel, April 9, 1876; Simon Boubée, “Beaux-Arts: Exposition des impressionists, chez Durant Ruel,” Gazette de France, April 5, 1876; Jules Castagnary, “Salon de 1876: Premier Article: Les Impressionistes: MM. Claude Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Caillebotte, Mlle Morizot,” Le siècle, May 6, 1876; Victor Cherbuliez, “Le Salon de 1876: Les Impressionistes, les tableaux de genre et les portraits,” Revue des deux mondes, June 1, 1876; Émile Pocheron, “Les impressionistes,” Le soleil, April 4, 1876. All in Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886: Documentation (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996), 2:45–113. »
12      “Uit Parijs, 15 mei 1876,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 3, no. 11 (June 1876): 81–82: “Het doel daarbij schijnt vooral te zijn, den toeschouwer veel te laten denken. 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.” »
13      Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 23–24. »
14      Marcellus Emants, “‘De Salon des refusés’ te Parijs,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 3, no. 10 (May 1876): 75–76: “Mijnheer Monet schildert vuurroode en hemelsblauwe schepen met hooggele masten, blauwgroene boomen, gele huizen en chromaatkleurig kroost op ultramarijn-water. Denkelijk had hij zich juist nieuwe verven aangeschaft, toen hem ‘t denkbeeld inviel van de schelste kleuren eenige kladden op een doek neer te werpen . . . Sisley—een ridder van den grijzen dag !—plakt eenige grauwe spinnewebben op een grauw fond neer, en verkondigt, dat dit moois een wintergezicht is. . . . Juffrouw Bertha Morissot [sic] eindelijk—stellig een geëmancipeerde dame—klontert er zoo lustig op los, dat ‘t vaak onmogelijk is te zeggen, of deze of gene vuile vlek een mensch, een beest, of een levenloos voorwerp moet aanduiden.” Identification of paintings illustrated under nos. 1 and 2 on the basis of Berson, New Painting, 2:58, 2:64. »
15      Emants, “De Salon des refusés,” 75–76: “een onbegrensde vereering van plotselinge indrukken, die zonder enige verstandscontrole op ’t doek worden gesmeten en terstond tot kunstwerk bestempeld [worden].” »
16      Marcellus Emants, “De Haagsche tentoonstelling van schilderijen,” Nederlandsche Kunstbode 2, no. 11 (June 1875): 81–84. »
17      “Frankrijk: Het leven te Parijs,” Algemeen Handelsblad, April 21, 1879: “Het is onmogelijk iets meer fantastisch, zonderlingers, overdreveners te zien. Het is om zich af te vragen of men niet eensklaps in de spreekkamer van een Lunatic-asylum verplaatst is.” »
18      “Gemengd Nieuws,” Het nieuws van den dag, April 22, 1880: “De . . . zogenaamde ‘Impressionisten’ zijn ontaarde Zola’s der schilderkunst en kladden allerlei alledaagsche figuren op monsterachtige wijze op het doek.” »
19      See Berson, New Painting, vol. 1. »
20      Malika M’rani Alaoui and Jenny Reynaerts, “George Henrik Breitner: Rambling and Responding,” in The Dutch in Paris, 1789–1914, ed. M. Jonkman (Bussum: THOTH, 2017), 157. »
21      See Haagsche Courant, September 8, 1886: “Voor het middenraam van de firma Goupil en Co. op de Plaats is deze week een schilderij tentoongesteld: ‘bij Monte Carlo,’ van den Franschen schilder Claude Monet.” »
22      In the stockbooks of The Hague branch of Goupil, five paintings by Monet are listed in 1886: Les fonds de Varengeville; La débâcle (glaces); Environs de Monte Carlo; Palmiers de Bordighera; and Falaises d’Étretat. Archive RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) inv. NL-HaRKD.0355. »
23      A. H. Huussen, Jr., “Claude Monet in Nederland,” in Monet in Holland, ed. Louis van Tilborgh (Zwolle: Waanders, 1986), 36–46. »
24      “Tentoonstelling van schilderijen in Arti et Amicitiae (II),” Algemeen Handelsblad, November 9, 1876: “Evenals wij de modes uit Parijs krijgen, zoo wordt ook iedere nieuwe richting op kunstgebied aldaar van lieverlede hier ingevoerd. Met de dusgenaamde ‘grijze school’ is dit ook het geval. De lust om alles bij voorkeur in het grijs te zien; de verheerlijking der natuur in lichten of zwaren rouw, in plaats van vroolijken zonneschijn en tintelende kleuren, is afkomstig uit Frankrijk. Eveneens de steeds toenemende neiging om voor schilderijen te doen doorgaan, wat niet veel meer dan welgelukte schetsen zijn.” »
25      Jeroen Kapelle, “Oosterbeek, Amsterdam, Den Haag,” in Anton Mauve 1838–1888, ed. Saskia de Bodt and Michiel Plomp (Bussum: THOTH, 2009), 63. »
26      “Tentoonstelling van schilderijen in Arti et Amicitiae (II),” Algemeen Handelsblad, November 9, 1876: “Bij onze groote meesters zien we ten minste wanneer men hun schilderijen meer nadert, dat een boom een boom, een schaap een schaap blijft. Bij de grijze impressionisten is dat geheel anders. Neem tot voorbeeld een in vele opzichten voortreffelijk doek, ‘In de duinen’ van Mauve; . . . Op grooten afstand is het licht en bruin over die massa voldoende verdeeld, om er schapen in te onderscheiden; gij nadert, en ziet niets dan embryons van dieren, vage massa’s.” »
27      Benno Tempel and Frouke van Dijke, “Poëtisch realisme. De Haagse School en het Hollandse landschap,” in Holland op z’n mooist. Op pad met de Haagse School, ed. Benno Tempel (Zwolle: WBooks, 2015), 37–56. »
28      Jenny Reynaerts, “Die Esthetik der Polderlandschaft,” in Der weite Blick, ed. Jenny Reynearts (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008), 43. »
29      Emke Raassen-Kruimel, “Mauve en de schilders van Laren,” in De Bodt and Plomp, Anton Mauve, 102. »
30      Lynne Ambrosini, “‘Leader of the School of the Impression’ Daubigny and His Legacy,” in Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape, ed. Lynne Ambrosini, Frances Fowle, and Maite van Dijk (Cincinnati: Taft Art Museum, 2016), 31. »
31      “Tweede tentoonstelling van tekeningen door de leden der Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij te ’s Gravenhage (slot),” Algemeen Handelsblad, August 15, 1877: “Wanneer men van de impressionisten spreekt, denkt een ieder, die deze beweging op kunstgebied volgt, onwillekeurig aan W. Maris en Mauve.” »
32      See Saskia de Bodt, “Pulchri Studio: Het imago van een kunstenaarsvereniging in de negentiende eeuw,” De Negentiende eeuw 12, no. 1 (January 1990): 24–42. »
33      Gerard Bilders to Johannes Kneppelhout, July 10, 1860, in Wiepke Loos, Gekleurd Grijs. Johannes Kneppelhout (1814–1885) en Gerard Bilders (1838–1865). Brieven en dagboek (Zwolle: Waanders, 2009), 263–64. »
34      See John Sillevis, “De Haagse school. Sentiment van het alledaagse,” in Tempel, Holland op z’n mooist, 7–36. »
35      Jacques van Santen-Kolff, “Een nationale vereering ter bevordering der waterverfteekenkunst. De Hollansche Teekenmaatschappij en haar tweede tentoonstelling,” De Banier 3, no. 1 (1877): 417–99: “Een volbloed en uiterst gezond Impressionist zoals tegenwoordig in Frankrijk een secte der zogenaamde ‘realisten’ wordt genoemd.” »
36      Jacques van Santen-Kolff, “Een blik in de Hollandsche schilderschool onzer dager,” De Banier 1, no. 3 (1875): 159. »
37      “Kunst en letteren,” Maasbode, February 15, 1888: “Dat hij impressionist was; dat hij den indruk, door het landschap op zijne kunstenaarsziel te weeg gebracht, dat hij vooral de poëzie van dat landschap weergaf, werd hem door velen als eene fout toegerekend. Maar die verwijten deden hem niet aarzelen of wankelen.” »
38      David van der Kellen, Jr., “De driejaarlijksche Tentoonstelling van Kunstwerken van levende Meesters te ’s Gravenhage,” Het nieuws van den Dag, May 28, 1884: “‘De buiige dag’ van W. Maris, is recht impressionistisch, doch zal geloof ik weinigen kunnen bevallen. Al is gevoel voor kleur niet te ontkennen, ’t is een verwarde massa en een lucht alsof ze uit vellen bestond.” »
39      See Frouke van Dijke, “Voorsteden en achterbuurten. De sensatie van de stad,” in Rumoer in de Stad. De schilders van Tachtig, ed. Benno Tempel and Frouke van Dijke (Zwolle: WBooks, 2017), 8–26. »
40      For Breitner, see Jan Veth, “Biografische aanteekeningen,” in George Hendrik Breitner, ed. Adriaan Pit, Willem Steenhof, Jan Veth, and Willem Vogelsang (Amsterdam: Scheltema en Holkema, 1902), 121; for Israels, see Anna Wagner, Isaac Israels (Venlo: Van Spijk, 1985), 23. »
41      Wagner, Israëls, 23. »
42      Richard Bionda and Carel Blotkamp, “Inleiding,” in De schilders van Tachtig. Nederlandse schilderkunst 1880–1895, ed. Bionda and Blotkamp (Zwolle: Waanders, 1991), 13–14. »
43      “De Tentoonstelling van Teekeningen in de kunstzalen der Maatschappij Arti et Amicitiae (III),” Het nieuws van den Dag, November 11, 1886: “Breitner is in N°. 23 ‘halte’ weer vreeselijk impressionistisch geweest. . . . Men ontwaart een bruine zwarte massa, dit zijn de paarden, waartusschen hier en daar eenige vegen gemeen blauw, die de regenmantels van de huzaren moeten verbeelden. Behalve het achtergedeelte van het eerste paard, zal niemand hierin iets schoons kunnen ontdekken.” »
44      Anton Cornelis Loffelt, “Tentoonstelling der Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij te ’s Gravenhage (IV),” Het nieuws van den Dag, September 4, 1897: “Israëls een Amsterdamsch grachtje met figuren bij laten avond, niet zoo impressionistisch slordig als vroeger. De huizen staan zelfs vrij stevig op hun palen.” »
45      Carel Blotkamp, “Kunstenaars als critici. Kunstkritiek in Nederland, 1880–1895,” in Bionda and Blotkamp, De schilders van Tachtig, 79–80. »
46      J. Stemming (Maurits van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling van schilderijen,” De Amsterdammer (daily), October 13, 1886: “Een van de beste schilderijen, van wat men noemt de impressionistische school, is zeker wel In het Duin, van Breitner, een schilderij die door de fijnheid van kleur, juistheid in de waarde der tonen, der bewegingen van het effect door de krachtige persoonlijkheid die er uit spreekt, gerust onder de beste der tentoonstelling gerangschikt kan worden.” »
47      Émile Zola, “Mon Salon. Les paysagistes,” L’evénement illustré 1, no. 59 (June 1868), repr. in Émile Zola, Écrits sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 215: “Il voit un paysage d’coup, dans la réalité de son ensemble, et il le traduit à sa façon, en en conservant la vérité et en lui communiquant l’émotion qu’il a ressentie.” »
48      Théodore Duret, Les peintres français en 1867 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1867), 26: “Corot est un homme d’une nature essentiellement poétique”; “[il a pris le pinceau,] non point tant pour reproduire ce qu’il voyait, que pour communiquer ce qu’il sentait.” »
49      Jules Castagnary, “Exposition du boulevard des Capucines: Les Impressionistes,” Le siècle, April 29, 1874. »
50      “Van de Rembrandttentoonstelling (III),” Algemeen Handelsblad, October 6, 1898: “Door de brutale schildering van het grauwe paard, waarvoor alle kleuren gebruikt zijn en dat, om het woord maar eens te gebruiken, even impressionistisch geschilderd is, als een Breitner, waarnaar deftige tentoonstellingbezoekers nu schuddebollend staan te kijken.” »
51      “Staatsbegroting,” Algemeen Handelsblad, December 2, 1891: “Wat het maatschappelijk vraagstuk betreft, wij staan voor een impressionistisch kunstwerk, waarin de toeschouwer geplaatst wordt voor een raadsel, niet voor een kunstwerk dat hem onmiddellijk genot geeft; alles is wazig, nevelig, donker.” »
52      “Gemengd Nieuws,” De Gooi- en Eemlander, February 28, 1891: “In langen tijd . . . heeft onze stad er niet zoo impressionistisch uitgezien als vorige week. De mist hing zoo dicht en zwaar over de grachten en straten, dat men soms moeite had een voorbijganger te onderscheiden.” »
53      Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Veel is er gesproken over en veel gescholden op de impressionisten. Ze waren de mannen die het zo nauw niet namen met de kunst, die half afgewerkte studies gaven voor schilderijen, die niet konden tekenen, niet schilderen. Het wordt tijd dat men dit anders in gaat zien. Eene impressie is de indruk dien men op een gegeven moment ontvangt van een stuk natuur, onder de omstandigheden, zooals het zich dan, en dan alleen, voordoet. Niet elk kunstenaar nu krijgt een zelfden indruk, het hangt geheel van zijne persoonlijkheid, van zijn temperament af, wat hem het sterkst zal treffen, wat hij zal trachten weer te geven met alle kracht en hartstocht die in hem zijn, omdat hij het voelt in het diepst van zijne ziel.” »
54      Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Een artist, dat is iemand die meer is dan een gewoon mensch, omdat hij door zijn fijne bewerktuiging meer gevoel en fantasie heeft.” »
55      Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Hem zal treffen het karakter dat er is in de vormen en hij zal ze weergeven met schoone lijnen die elk op zich zelf zeggen wat hij gevoeld heeft.” »
56      Stemming (Van der Valk), “De stedelijke tentoonstelling”: “Nu zullen velen mij zeggen: maar de schilderij van Breitner is niet af, niet uitgewerkt . . . Daarop antwoord ik dit. Met enkele lijnen vol uitdrukking de actie van het paard of een ruiter aan te geven, zoodat er leven en gang en karakter in zit, staat hooger dan lijntje voor lijntje, haartje voor haartje te volgen, al is het nog zoo juist, die details welke men toch niet opmerkt bij een figuur in beweging.” »
57      Joseph Alberdingk Thijm, “Het Landschap op onze Ten-toon-stelling,” Algemeen Handelsblad, August 26, 1883: “De jongste kunstrichting, die men impressionisme noemt, maakt er vooral werk van, de stemming des kunstenaars te portretteren. . . . Het impressionisme van onze tijd . . . hangt met het individualisme natuurlijk ten engste samen.” »
58      Johan Gram, “Het Museum Mesdag,” Haagsche Stemmen 39 (1889): 477–87: “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 en krachtige opvatting.” »
59      In 1888 Van Gogh dubbed the impressionists the “great Impressionists of the Grand Boulevard,” indicating they were all selling works at the dealers located at the principal boulevards of Paris. See Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, March 10, 1888, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 584. »
60      The only artists about whom Israels wrote were Manet, Jean-François Raffaëlli, and Henri Fantin-Latour. See Elsbeth Veldpape, Isaac Israels: Chroniqueur van het vlietende leven (Otterloo: Kröller-Müller Museum, 1999), 34. Breitner only mentioned Millet and Corot; see Paul Hefting, G. H. Breitner. Brieven aan A. P. Stolk (Utrecht: Haentjes Dekker en Gumbert, 1970), 57; Theo van Gogh to Vincent van Gogh, Paris, October 22, 1889, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 813. »
61      See John Sillevis, “De hoogtijdagen van de Haagse School (1870–1885),” in De Haagse School. Hollandse meesters van de 19 eeuw, ed. Ronald De Leeuw, John Sillevis, and Charles Dumas (Den Haag: Gemeentemuseum, 1983), 77–88; Renske Cohen Tervaert and Chris Stolwijk, “De ‘fabriek’: Anton Mauve en zijn handelaren,” in De Bodt and Plomp, Anton Mauve, 135–46. »
62      This stasis lasted until about 1891. In 1891 the Dutch author Frederik van Eeden wrote an influential article about Van Gogh, and in 1892 two exhibitions of his work were organized, as well as the avant-garde exhibitions Keuze-Tentoonstelling van Hedendaagse Nederlandsche Kunst and a second venue of Les XX. See Tibbe, Verstrengeling, 47–53. »
63      Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, on or about February 27, 1888, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 580. »
64      Richard Thomson, “Theo van Gogh: An Honest Broker,” in Theo van Gogh, 1857–1891: Art Dealer, Collector and Brother of Vincent, ed. Chris Stolwijk and Richard Thomson (Zwolle: Waanders, 1999), 201n90. »
65      Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, Arles, between June 16 and June 20, in Jansen, Luijten, and Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, no. 626. »
2. “Impressionism” as a Contested Term in Dutch Art Criticism, 1870–1900
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