The Impressionists: perhaps their secret was just a sight defect

Previously, painting was a question of detail. A good artist depicted a scene with a realistic precision that included the smallest particulars. Then came the "revolutionary vision" of the Impressionists who broke all the rules of figurative art by bathing their paintings in light. Canvases feature small, thin brushstrokes, patches of color suggesting landscapes, and everything is slightly out of focus. Perhaps this is the right word to define the Impressionists, according to Australian neurologist Noel Dan. Some time ago he stated in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience that Monet, Renoir, Degas and others painted so simply because they were shortsighted. The art critics of the 1800s also commented disparagingly that the Impressionists had sight problems: in 1877, the newspaper Le Figaro wrote that their paintings were “a deluge of pistachio, vanilla and currant cream”, the result of color blindness that seemed to be endemic among the new artists. But Noel Dan’s conclusions were based on a careful analysis of the works. According to the neurologist, all the philosophical reflections about the Impressionists’ efforts to represent reality as it is perceived by ignoring details and conveying an overall “impression” of a subject and, therefore, its real substance, have been swept away by one fact: if they had worn eyeglasses, Claude Monet and the others would not have painted the way they did and the history of art would, perhaps, have taken a different route.

These statements made more than one art expert rise up in protest: John House, the eminent critic at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, said that this interpretation was “garbage” and pointed out that the Impressionists were well aware of how and why their method of painting was so different from that of other artists of the time. The fact remains that a group of researchers at the University of Calgary has gathered “proof” that seems to support the theory that some of the Impressionists did in fact have sight defects.

Let’s take the most famous of them all, Claude Monet, and the painting that contributed to “baptizing” Impressionism in 1874: “Impression, Sunrise”. It was shown for the first time in a collective exhibition by the new artists and provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term impressionists (but his intentions were derogatory) to describe this revolutionary method of painting. On observing the painting, the Australian neurologist’s notion does not seem quite so bizarre: the surroundings are vague, the colors blend into each other and objects become mere shadows. Monet’s paintings changed when he was afflicted by another sight problem in the latter years of his life, cataract. This can be seen by looking at two versions of Le Pont Japonais, a corner of Monet’s garden at Giverny in Normandy, one of his favorite subjects which he depicted innumerable times over the years. The early canvases feature the artist’s typical (shortsighted?) brushstrokes, but the canvases painted around 1920 are completely different: the bridge is unrecognizable and the colors are dark with a predominance of red. According to art critics, this is an expression of Monet’s “abstract turnabout"; Dan states that red is the color that myopes see best and that cataract changes the ability to see colors and outlines.

Matteo Piovella, president of the Italian Society of Ophthalmology, agrees with the neurologist: “Although it is not certain, it is probable that a different perception of reality caused by sight defects did influence the art of the Impressionists. During the early stages of cataract, for example, sight is not yet damaged but color perception has already changed. It is like wearing sunglasses all the time: whites are less sharp and contrasts are softer. So it is highly likely that Monet’s canvases convey his “altered” vision of the world. Furthermore, in the 1800s the requirement for eyeglasses was considered to be a physical disability and we know that Cezanne and Renoir never wanted to wear them: Cezanne upheld that they were irredeemably vulgar. Moreover, at that time the correction of sight defects was certainly not as we know it today and it is impossible to say that people who wore eyeglasses could see well. And it is not out of the question that for many Impressionists the establishment of a new method of painting was compensation for their sight defects”.

However, the theory that sight defects had a prevailing influence on the works of certain artists put forward by researchers does not exclude the fact that certain expressive methods are the result of an artistic-philosophical choice, regardless of diopters. Otherwise, to explain the works of certain contemporary artists we would have to evoke (at least momentary) blindness.