Das Jahr 1867 ist für die Kunstmetropole Paris in vielerlei Hinsicht ein Wendepunkt. Im Januar stirbt Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, der letzte der großen Salonmaler und Porträtist seiner Epoche. Am 1. April eröffnet auf dem Marsfeld die Weltausstellung, deren offizielle Hymne der Italiener Gioacchino Rossini komponiert hat und auf der die Firma Krupp ihre neue Fünfzig-Tonnen-Stahlkanone präsentiert, mit der die preußisch-deutschen Truppen kaum drei Jahre später die französische Hauptstadt beschießen werden. Und am 31. August erliegt Charles Baudelaire, der Dichter der „Blumen des Bösen“ und Prophet einer modernen, dem Alltagsleben zugewandten Malerei, in einem Pariser Hospital den Folgen der Syphilis.
Dass einer der jungen Maler, die Baudelaire beim Wort genommen haben, im Frühsommer von der erhöhten Kolonnade des Louvre aus drei bahnbrechende Plein-Air-Ansichten des östlichen Stadtzentrums erschafft, fällt in all der Betriebsamkeit kaum jemandem auf. Erst ein Jahrzehnt später, als die Impressionisten über die Hüter der Salonkunst triumphieren, wird klar, was Claude Monet in diesem Weltausstellungsjahr gelungen ist.
In Monet’s view of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, which has been part of the collection of the Berlin National Gallery since 1906, the court church of the French kings lies in the midday light from the side. In the square in front of the basilica, women with parasols and men in suits with top hats stroll between waiting carriages in the shade of blossoming chestnut trees planted in four rows. The painter outlined the passers-by, cars and trees with a few splashes of color, and the house facades on the Rue des Prêtres on the right also blur towards the edge of the picture.
The perspective lines of the picture run over the chestnut tree tops towards the late Gothic rose window of the church, whose tracery Monet traces exactly. The blue of the summer sky is reflected in the window glass and on the roof panels of the nave. You think you can hear the voices of people under the protective canopy of leaves, while silence reigns in the upper half of the picture.
In the exhibition at the Alte Nationalgalerie, which presents the picture among Monet’s views of the Quai du Louvre and the Jardin de L’Infante borrowed from The Hague and Oberlin, Ohio, there is a cabinet with contemporary photographs of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in the years before the three paintings were created. On them you can see that the square in front of the church was surrounded by two rows of four-story houses before the development fell victim to Baron Haussmann’s wrecking ball.
The area around the Louvre and the Île de la Cité, the nucleus of the medieval city, were among the focal points of the brutal renovation project that Haussmann undertook at the behest of Napoleon III. created today’s cityscape. When Monet painted his three views, work around Notre-Dame was still in full swing. But Monet didn’t want to show construction sites, but rather the new bourgeois splendor of Paris. For him, the kiosk with refreshments and the public toilet disguised as a billboard that stand on his “Quai du Louvre” on the bank above the Seine are just as much a part of the urban decor as the towers of the Panthéon and Saint-Étienne-du-Mont on the horizon .
On the Seine island in the right part of the picture, a house wall serves as a red and white advertising space. The advertising of a painting supplies shop can also be seen on a house next to Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The spectacle of consumption and fashion is part of the world that the Impressionists will celebrate, and Monet, who is only twenty-six years old, shines ahead of them.
“Monet and the Impressionist City” is the farewell exhibition of Ralph Gleis, who has directed the Alte Nationalgalerie since 2017 and will be moving to the Albertina in Vienna as director in January. In these seven years, the classicist building on Museum Island has become the heart of the Berlin State Museums. Gleis brought the Symbolists, the Secessionists and the early modern artists into his house, and he gave the masters Friedrich, Schadow, Rodin, Gauguin and Caillebotte the exposure they deserve. He has repeatedly succeeded in the feat of combining major works from his own collection with loans in such a way that the well-known appears in an unusual and eye-opening light.
Same here. Grouped around the three pictures that Monet painted from the Louvre colonnade in 1867 are city views from other impressionists, including the oldest, a panorama of the Quai Malaquais with the Institut de France by Renoir from 1872, and the most recent, a view from the Quai Saint-Michel on Notre-Dame by the late impressionist Maximilien Luce from 1904 alongside a simultaneous, Fauvist-tinged variation of the same motif by Matisse.
If Ralph Gleis had added Renoir’s early “Pont des Arts” from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, it would have become clear how much Monet’s pioneering work was part of a program. The rejection of almost all of their submissions for the 1867 Salon set the Impressionists in motion; they swarmed out to find the reflection of a new, non-academic truth on the streets of Paris, and they almost succeeded in organizing their own group exhibition to put your feet up. The plan failed because of money.
By the time he succeeded seven years later, Monet was no longer living in Paris. In Argenteuil he painted the rural banks of the Seine, while his friend and supporter Caillebotte painted the urban canyons around the Opéra Garnier from the balcony of his apartment on Rue Halévy. The church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois was no longer an issue for the Impressionists at that time. It had served its purpose that summer at the World’s Fair when Claude Monet made it the subject of a new kind of painting in which the city became the backdrop for the spectacle of light.
Monet and the Impressionist City. Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin, until January 26, 2025. The catalog costs 28 euros.
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