Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines (1872) and Degas’s Place de la Concorde (1876) are both plein-air paintings depicting the modern urban spaces of Paris. Although dissimilar at first glance, both paintings, through their asymmetrical compositions, application of unpolished brushstrokes and paints, and the fragmentary nature of the subjects being depicted, have contributed to the development of Impressionism in the late nineteenth century. The focus on motions and momentariness of the scenes is central to the Impressionist goal of returning to the visual itself. And in its discovery of those constantly altering moments, there consists an implicit criticism toward the symbolic, the formal, and the classical (Clark 1984). As will be discussed in this essay, these two artworks are certainly exemplars of this movement.
On the subject and perspective, while Monet has painted a bird’s-eye view city landscape with no central figure involved, Degas has largely remained to be a painter of figures and centered on a man with his two daughters and a little dog in this painting. The pedestrians in Monet’s painting are mostly vague silhouettes, each painted with one or two simple brushstrokes. It seems that it is the overall impression of the busy boulevard itself that is being represented. In comparison, Degas has painted the man and the girls in relatively greater detail such that the man is actually identifiable to be a friend of Degas. And different from a normal portrait, this painting is more like a capture in the street, en plein air, with the stance of the flâneur. Most interestingly, the figures in the frame seem to be disconnected, fragmented from each other. Their bodily orientations, their gazes, and their motions are unrelated, which could potentially be interpreted as a reflection or criticism of the alienation of modern industrial societies. Nevertheless, both paintings are similar in terms of their depiction or capture of modern life, without referring to any classical, religious, or mythological narratives. Therefore, both their anticlassical perspectives and their modern subjects have set them free from the academic traditions and formalism and form a new style of art.
In terms of the composition, both paintings have rejected the traditional emphasis on symmetry and order. Monet has painted this newly constructed boulevard in Paris as observed from the window of Nadar’s Studio. He has directly painted on the canvas what he saw with a diagonal composition. Unlike the classical history paintings, no ideal form is being depicted, no story is being told, and no extending lines to the horizon can be seen. On the contrary, the center of the painting is simply the leaves of the trees, appearing flat and compressed. Similarly, the end of the street is simply blurred into shades, which seems to mimic human vision in a natural condition, with limited visibility and attention. Likewise, in Degas’s Place de la Concorde, the subjects are not centered, and no symmetry of any kind can be observed. The figures are fragmentary, being cut off from the edges, especially the man on the left edge. This unstable, asymmetric style of composition has created this unique feeling of momentariness or transience in modern life. Furthermore, this can also be viewed as a kind of self-criticality, where the limitations of painting have been acknowledged and valued, instead of avoided (Greenberg 1993). Combined with the unpolished use of brushstrokes, which will be discussed later, the Impressionist characteristics are again highlighted.
We can observe that both works were painted in a painterly style with unpolished brushstrokes and contain areas where simple flat paints were applied to the canvas. For example, if we look at the trees in the center of Monet’s painting, all leaves have simply faded into a greyish cloud, with no clear lines or textures. And the floor of the street is also filled with grey in monotone. In Degas’s painting, there are still some highlights and shadows used to model the figures’ faces and bodies. But if we turn to the background, same as Monet, large areas of loosely applied brushstrokes can be seen. The linear perspective is unclear, and the edges of the figures are somewhat blended with the background, creating this non-static and unstable image. The painterly style and clearly visible brushstrokes of the two paintings have again emphasized the actions and motions involved in the scene and the Impressionists’ attention to the constantly changing outside world. Instead of painting the eternal or the ideal, they have painted the transient, the variable, the fragmentary moments in modern life.
From both the formal qualities of the two paintings aforementioned, their modern subjects being depicted, and their especially new perspective of observing, recording, enjoying the modern world, we can see how the Impressionist movement has greatly opposed the traditions and influenced the history of art.