Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism

“[M]any who lived through the Terrible Year succumbed to a new and suddenly deeper sense of existential fragility, and it is hard not to see Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and transient domesticity as expressions of this heightened awareness of change and mortality.”

This quote summarizes some of author Sebastian Smee’s conclusions about how the events of 1870-1871 impacted the Impressionist artists, whose first exhibition was held in 1874. He argues that the experience of the war and the Commune, the death and destruction of that era, provoked the artists to focus on the transience of life, reflecting The Impact of Collective Trauma on Creativity.

“Édouard responded powerfully to this willingness to see what other art traditions shied away from. Old Women (Time), for instance, was as far from the French classical ideal as it was possible to get. Édouard also liked the way not only Goya but especially Ribera and Velázquez projected dignity onto individuals from all classes. It fed into his instinctive egalitarianism, his feeling for justice, his republicanism.”

This quote represents one of the first examples of The Relationship Between Art and Politics that Smee explores in Paris in Ruins. He connects Édouard Manet’s fondness for the works of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya and other Spanish painters like Jusepe de Ribera and Diego Velázquez to his “republicanism,” arguing that this political sentiment is represented in Édouard’s artwork and inspired by these painters. Smee uses some editorial language to drive this point home by characterizing Édouard’s egalitarianism as “instinctive,” presenting it as a fixed (and admirable) aspect of his personality.

“‘With characters like your daughters,’ he wrote to Cornélie (with no small measure of masculine self-regard), ‘my teaching will make them painters, not minor amateur talents. Do you really understand what that means? In the world of the grande bourgeoisie in which you move, it would be a revolution, I would even say a catastrophe.’”

Throughout Paris in Ruins, Smee relies on personal correspondence to build a picture of the social circle in which Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet moved. In this quote, Smee cites a letter from Berthe’s art tutor, Joseph Guichard, to her mother, Cornélie, in which the tutor warns that the Morisot sisters’ artistic talent would surpass that which was expected or considered proper for women of their class. It provides insight into the expectations that Berthe had to overcome to become a professional artist, rather than a hobbyist or amateur.

“Baudelaire, whom Édouard was mourning as he embarked on these paintings, had once called for criticism to be ‘partial, passionate, and political.’ Manet’s paintings based on the events in Mexico were all three. But those events seemed far away, across the Atlantic Ocean. Édouard couldn’t know that Paris itself would soon be besieged, then drenched in the blood of its own inhabitants.”

This quote is an example of foreshadowing. Smee describes Manet’s painting The Execution of Emperor Maximilian as depicting an example of the bloody breakdown of the Second Empire. He creates a sense of dramatic irony because the audience is aware of the breakdown soon to occur in the Metropole, whereas Manet is not. He characterizes this work as inspired by writer Charles Baudelaire, who died in 1867.

“He was no longer a lonely maverick; he was the unofficial head of a new school, a new way of thinking. People were coming around.”

In this quote, Smee uses a novelistic approach to provide insight into Édouard Manet’s position of leadership in forging the way from traditional French painting to what would become Impressionism. He uses colorful language (“lonely maverick”) and informal expressions (“people were coming around”) to attempt to make this great historical figure seem compelling and relatable to a contemporary audience.

“The art establishment’s conservatism was not just an aesthetic matter. It bled into the wider political situation. The painters in Manet’s circle were almost all republicans. And since their few champions in the press—people like Zola and Duranty—were also, for the most part, ardent republican journalists working for openly republican publications (many of them subjected to censorship), the art establishment inevitably associated these new painters with opposition to Napoleon III’s regime.”

This quote highlights the connections between The Relationship Between Art and Politics during the Second Empire. Smee emphasizes how the “art establishment” was closely connected with “Napoleon III’s regime,” whereas Manet’s circle of artists were republicans who opposed the imperial government. In this dynamic, artistic “aesthetics” were representative of political orientations. Smee notes that these republican artists were supported in the press by left-wing writers like Émile Zola, author of working-class epics, and Louis Edmond Duranty, a proponent of Realism.

“By 1870, a tremendous roiling energy, as of water coming to the boil, seemed to enliven and accelerate the activities of all the future Impressionists. A new way of painting was coming into being.”

In this quote, Smee uses a simile to express the momentum of what would become the Impressionist movement prior to the War of 1870. He describes it as “water coming to the boil,” because water molecules accelerate as they are heated. They ultimately turn into steam, a new form of the water molecule, just as the kinds of paintings Manet’s circle are creating at the time would eventually turn into “a new way of painting.”

“Paris besieged! It was unthinkable. Starved of reliable information, separated from loved ones and friends, those who remained in the capital had no inkling of how much waiting, wondering, and worrying lay ahead of them.”

This quote highlights the incredible stakes of the siege of Paris during the War of 1870. Smee characterizes the attack on the city as “unthinkable” to its residents. He creates a sense of dramatic irony by emphasizing that Parisians were unaware (“had no inkling”) that they would be under siege for over four months.

“Édouard, whose patriotic blood was now at a rolling boil, decried the Prussian’s ‘outrageous pretensions.’ He was no longer an artist—he was a soldier. Paris, he said, was ‘determined to defend itself to the last.’”

In this quote, Smee uses quotations from Édouard Manet from an unknown source to illustrate Édouard’s transformation during the siege of Paris. This provides insight into Édouard’s patriotism and his desire to defend the city where he lived. It is further evidence of Édouard’s republicanism, because as a wealthy artist he could have avoided enlistment, but instead he chose to fight, in line with his egalitarian values. It is an example of The Personal Experiences of Artists During Crises.

“At the Louvre itself, windows were reinforced and sandbags piled up around the perimeter. For Courbet and his fellow republicans, seeing this ‘cardinal emblem of French patrimony,’ as the art historian Hollis Clayson aptly described the Louvre, released from the yoke of imperial control was marvelous. For art lovers of all political persuasions, seeing it surrounded by sandbags was deeply alarming.”

The Louvre is a palace, part of which was transformed into a museum during the First French Revolution. Today, it is one of the largest museums in the world. During his reign, Napoleon III expanded and renovated the palace, which cemented its association with the Second Empire, and explains Smee’s comment that republicans would have felt it was “marvelous” to once again take the building under republican control. This quote also notes how “alarming” the preparations to protect it during the siege would have been for “art lovers” (and likely other Paris residents).

“France had waged a war and lost. It had a new government. A great city had been drastically transformed. Yet to Berthe Morisot, many things felt strangely the same.”

This quote describes Berthe Morisot’s personal experiences of the siege of Paris, reflecting The Personal Experiences of Artists During Crises. As a bourgeois woman, she was not an active participant in the historical events taking place around her, instead spending the four months in her family home with little social interaction. Here, Smee emphasizes the stark contrast between the upheaval going on in Paris and Berthe’s relative stasis in its midst.

“Degas was upset not only by the senseless loss of Cuvelier; he was also furious at art, at its impotence—and by extension, his own.”

This description of Edgar Degas’s reactions to the death of sculptor and his friend Joseph Cuvelier indicates The Impact of Collective Trauma on Creativity. Art can seem frivolous and “imponten[t]” in comparison to the life-and-death stakes of armed conflict. However, many artists, including Degas, took part in the defense of Paris, so it is unclear to what extent they truly felt this way, or if this is a colorful characterization of their emotions by Smee.

“Édouard knew he would see action sooner or later and wondered how he would fare. The days of strolling the freshly hewn boulevards with Baudelaire, discussing art with Degas at the Café Guerbois, or playing the master in Bazille’s studio felt far in the past.”

This quote is an example of how Smee uses third-person limited perspective and informed speculation to give insight into The Personal Experiences of Artists During Crises. He describes what Édouard Manet “knew” and “wondered,” assessments that are based on how most people would feel in a similar situation. In the second sentence of the quote, he contrasts the chaos Édouard was then experiencing with the joy and community he had experienced before the war.

“Meanwhile, Courbet insisted, art shouldn’t ‘lag behind the revolution that is taking place in France at this moment.’”

Gustave Courbet was one of the most explicitly and vocally political artists that Smee features in Paris in Ruins. He acts as a foil for Manet in the narrative. This quote highlights Courbet’s vocal belief that art and politics are inherently connected, which contrasts with Manet’s more moderate positions on The Relationship Between Art and Politics.

“People emerging from trauma, or from prolonged periods of crisis—of ‘stuckness’—are often ready to make great changes. Their experiences have given them a profoundly altered idea of what is at stake in their lives. Depending on how much damage they have sustained, and on what their circumstances were before, they may be moved to rewrite the narratives by which they had previously lived. So it was with Berthe Morisot.”

Smee argues here that Berthe Morisot was “moved to rewrite the narratives by which [she] had previously lived” in the aftermath of the siege of Paris, which is one example of his assessment of The Personal Experiences of Artists During Crises. His use of the hypothetical (“they may be moved”) signals that this assessment is based on informed speculation drawn from existing facts rather than explicit statements on the part of Berthe; she never straightforwardly stated she was inspired to dedicate her life to art because of the crisis, even if the chronology suggests this might have been a motivating factor.

“It is not easy to say what the Commune was. Like an Impressionist painting seen too close, it never really coalesced.”

This quote connects the gestalt or the overall assemblage of the Paris Commune of 1871 with the Impressionist art form that came into shape years afterward, by comparing how they were both a loose collection of elements that form a picture whose details are unclear. This rhetorical move gestures at Smee’s central argument that Impressionism is best understood as an art form informed by the turbulent political backdrop of the Terrible Year.

“The precariousness of the Commune—its illegality, its lack of clear leadership, its philosophical confusion—alarmed him as much as it worried Berthe, whose brother was in the army seeking to crush it. They balked at the Communards’ overreach and saw, with dread, the coming backlash.”

In this quote, Smee describes Édouard Manet’s and Berthe Morisot’s reactions to the Paris Commune. He notes that although they had republican sympathies, their politics were less radical than those of the Communards. In characterizing them as “dread[ing] the coming backlash,” Smee indicates that both artists were politically savvy.

“For Berthe, however, and for Édouard, nothing was clear-cut. Each had a foot in both camps. Both came from wealthy families whose interests conflicted with the radical left, yet they were republicans, sympathetic to the radicals who had fought the authoritarianism of Napoleon III, regretted the surrender to Prussia, and simply wanted something better. But the debacle that had just unfolded could be neither undone nor ignored. It was a new lens through which, from now on, everything had to be seen. It allowed for no illusions.”

In this quote, Smee foreshadows the argument he makes in Part 4 about The Impact of Collective Trauma on Creativity. Specifically, he comments on how Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet needed “a new lens through which, from now on, everything had to be seen.” He argues later that this “new lens” is the one on display in Impressionist artwork, which seeks to capture scenes as they really are, without politics or artifice.

“Most artists who lived through the Commune or returned to Paris in its immediate aftermath had little interest in churning out propaganda or rhetoric. They were angry. Some wanted to bear witness. But as weeks and then months elapsed and the full extent of what had happened was brought home, their creativity seized up.”

One of The Impacts of Collective Trauma on Creativity for many French Impressionist artists following the Terrible Year of 1870-1871 is their lack of creativity. They were worn out from the stress and chaos of that time and had little energy to create. Smee notes that they were also uninterested in “churning out propaganda” for the republican regime. It is implied that this reluctance was partly due to the brutal repression of the Commune by the government.

“His favorite expression in these days was totalement sincère—‘totally sincere.’ He no longer had time for the modes of irony and mischief that had underpinned his best painting in the 1860s: the quotations from the Old Masters, the winking love affair with Spain, the costumes and cross-dressing. He wanted to make clear statements. To show facts.”

In this quote, Smee describes how Édouard Manet’s work changed after the War of 1870 and the Commune to reflect a new sense of sincerity. While Manet did indeed emphasize the “sincerity” of his work, this tendency was already in evidence before the Terrible Year. The catalogue for Manet’s independent exhibition in 1867, presumably written by the artist himself, invited the public to “come and see sincere work” (Loren Lerner and Karine Antaki. “Chapter 2 Summary Édouard MANET and Modern Life.” Creating the Modern). This is an example of the somewhat vexed timeline Smee attempts to create to establish a change in the artists’ work before and after the Terrible Year.

“So it was against this tense political backdrop—the imminent death of the republic, the likely restoration of a monarchy, and a conservative Catholic revival—that the first Impressionist exhibition took shape.”

Here, the author describes the political dynamics at play when what would become known as the first Impressionist exhibition, the Société Anonyme exhibition, took place in 1874. This is a method he uses to highlight The Relationship Between Art and Politics. He uses language like “imminent death” to emphasize the drama and existential nature of the politics of the time.

“They didn’t want to have to jump through the hoops of the conservative Salon jury or pander to a discredited establishment just to have their work seen. They wanted to assert their freedom. Spellbound by light, entranced by modern life, they wanted to revolt against the inherited burden of a gloomy, moribund iconography. They wanted to paint what it felt like to be outside, liberated both from the artifice of the studio and from the humiliations of the past, to immerse themselves in a kind of perpetual present.”

Smee outlines the motivations and desires of the Impressionist artists. He emphasizes how they sought to be “liberated […] from the humiliations of the past.” This is an implicit reference to France’s loss in the War of 1870 and the tragedy of the Commune. This quote is one example of how Smee assesses The Impact of Collective Trauma on Creativity.

“A similar dynamic is at play in the series of portraits Édouard painted of Berthe in the two or three years after Bloody Week. They are paintings of intimacy, which is neither a subject nor an object but a zone, a threshold, a charge enlivening the psychological space between two subjects. Nothing one might want to say about intimacy, nothing that truly matters, is verifiable. After the fact, it is always engulfed by the roar of history. But it is no less real for that. And art is one of the methods invented by humans to record and rekindle it.”

This is one of the most poetic passages in Paris in Ruins. Smee and historians have been unable to find documentary evidence of how far the romance between Édouard and Berthe went. In lieu of this primary evidence, Smee relies on his subjective assessment of Édouard’s portraits of Berthe to draw a conclusion about their “intimacy.” He justifies using the paintings as evidence of their relationship because “art is one of the methods invented by humans to record […] intimacy,” but his assertions are nevertheless speculative.