Birth of the seaside
Andrew Lambirth Impressionists by the Sea Royal Academy until 30 September Sponsored by Farrow & Ball If we must have frequent Impressionist exhibitions, and it's clear from the public's insatiable appetite for them that we must, then at least let's have good ones. The current show at the Academy is a wellconceived and enjoyable expedition into a theme. All too often themed shows seem forced — the art selected to illustrate an idea, rather than the idea helping us to focus on key works of art. Impressionists by the Sea is both interesting and revealing, and it includes a good percentage of high-quality art into the bargain. An excellent show for those who prefer the idea of the seaside to the actuality of overcrowded or rain-despoiled beaches.
The exhibition transports us to the northern coastline of France, to those Normandy fishing villages like Deauville and Trouville which suddenly became fashionable tourist destinations in the 1860s and 1870s. Before 1830, only Dieppe was a resort, a kind of continental Brighton for the beau monde on both sides of the Channel. Within a few decades, all along the coast the timehonoured subsistence industry of fishing was replaced by a culture of leisure. Trouville, for instance, was a village of fewer than 2,000 souls in 1830, yet within 30 years it had nearly trebled its population and enjoyed — if that is the right word — an annual influx of some 20,000 summer visitors. The north coast all at once became a popular subject for art and literature, and painters flocked to the new terrain, to treat it in new ways. This exhibition begins on a Romantic note, the sea as nature untamed and awesome, sublime in its manifestations. This gives way to two forms of Realism, one devoted to fashionable holidaymakers on the beach, the other finding its masterful expression in Courbet. This in turn is replaced by a High Impressionist fascination with the effects of light and weather as optical phenomena, and we witness the realities of driving rain, morning sun or sea fret, conveyed through prismatic colour.
The first room offers just five paintings as historical context to give the visitor an idea of what the Impressionists were escaping from. There are a couple of big paintings of wild seas by Eugene Isabey, an unconvincing peasant idyll by Jules Breton, a strange early Whistler, and Boudin concentrating on the fashionable crowds (mostly seated on rush-bottomed kitchen chairs, for some reason) at Trouville, furnished with parasols but ignoring the barely visible sea. No need to linger here, but move through into the main room of the exhibition to be greeted by three magnificent Courbets in a row on the far wall. What a superb introduction to the finest painter in this exhibition. The first painting is of the familiar profile of the rock face at Etretat (a resort apparently 'discovered' by Isabey in the 1820s) nicknamed 'the Elephant' by Maupassant because of its dipping-trunk shape, presented as a landscape with sea and boats. The second and third paintings are more radical. 'Calm Sea' is an extraordinarily minimal subject, only the bottom quarter of the canvas given over to sea and beach, the rest being sky. This subtly banded composition is gorgeous in its serenity. Next to it is another shoreline painting, this time a sunset at Trouville, with rocks to the fore and luscious apricot-pinks to the sky. No people disturb the repose of nature, except a sail against the horizon.
Alongside this first group of Courbets are a couple of delicate, highly atmospheric Whistlers. In both of these wispy but curiously robust images, human presence plays a more important role than in Courbet. On the other side of the Whistlers are three more Courbet paintings, even more powerful than the first group. First comes 'Marine Landscape', also known as 'Eternity' from the chromatic plangency of its blues. It's a more mysterious painting than the others, with its great lump of rock in the foreground like a hulk, and its spiritual, other-worldly colour. Usually in the permanent collection of Bristol Museum, it should be better known to us than the other Courbets, which have come from as far afield as San Francisco. 'The Wave' is perhaps the most exciting Courbet here: a daring combination of inventive mark-making and emotional turbulence, laced with complex hints of sexuality. The paintings by Jongkind on the wall opposite look old-fashioned and anecdotal in comparison. Even the Boudins seem too preoccupied with figures immersed in the presumably delightful rituals of promenading and bathing.
The end room is divided into two smaller spaces, one dealing with early Impressionism — all the paintings being of people at play, except a splendid Manet of sailing boats on the beach at low tide. Another Manet, depicting his wife and brother on the beach, couldn't be more freshly or informally painted, an effect rather mitigated by its overwrought frame. The second space is given over to Salon paintings of the beach, denoting the Establishment opposition. Three dark and visually cramped scenes by (respectively) Pelouse, Cazin and Daubigny are set off by a lovely pellucid Guillemet and a late Boudin of Etretat, full of light and space. The last room is dominated by Monet, and neither Gauguin nor any of the other artists can steal his thunder. That said, there's quite a nice Caillebotte of rooftops and a highly coloured almost bruisedlooking Renoir landscape among the contenders. But Monet has the range and the results, from the sweetness of poppies in a wheatfield to the fine and satisfying balance of vertical and horizontal in 'The Beach and Cliffs at Pourville'. The stunning lavender greens and pinks of 'Shadows on the Sea, Pourville', hanging next to it, are cranked up even further in intensity by yellow. A final picture, 'The Sea at Fecamp', shows what a master can do with colour and form.
The exhibition subsequently tours America: to Washington (The Phillips Collection, 20 October 2007 to 13 January 2008) and Hartford, Connecticut (Wadsworth Atheneum, 9 February to 11 May 2008). I've no doubt it will bring as much pleasure to American viewers as it has to the British.
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