The Fishing Party FWN 626 1873/4 26.5cm x 34
Life was tough for Claude and Camille Monet when Claude bought this painting. Claude’s paintings were not selling, and he had but a few commissions. Yet they paid 50 Francs for this little painting by Cezanne, in exchange for one painted by Claude, and got 50 Francs cash. The cash would pay the rent, and provide them with food for the next few weeks; and the picture would provide inspiration and decorate their bedroom, till it would eventually be passed on to their son. Well, inspiration in good times, when Claude had the eye to see; but when Claude wasn’t seeing well, Camille would cover the Cezanne with a cloth before they retired for the night.
The small group of painters that became known as the Impressionists would change the course of Art History, and move art, locked in the Institutions of the past, into modern times. They had met at the art-colleges in Paris in the 1860’s, and followed their heroes of the generation before; and now this band of revolutionaries met together in the café’s and bars of Montmartre: those who’s paintings had been refused by the Art Establishment of the day. Monet and Bazille had thought of a ‘Salon des refugees’, in the late 1860’s, but then the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71 had overtaken everything. The End of the French Empire, and the dawn of the Third Republic gave renewed hope to their vision of the future of art. The time was right, they thought, to exhibit the paintings of the Impressionists!
Monet became the leader of the group – he was a determined kind of guy; yes, prone to depression when things were going wrong – he attempted suicide in the late 1860’s; but, while bordering on the cavalier, he was an organizer. Cezanne would say of Monet’s art, and his personality: “Monet sticks to a single vision, and gets where he’s going and stays there!” and Monet had waited 10 years for the chance to unfold his vision of a new art inspired by nature and ordinary life. Pissarro was the father of the band – the old wise one, he even looked like Abraham; not saying much, but when he did, people listened. Morisot and Guillaumin covered what we might now call outreach – making contact with dealers and art officialdom respectively. Sisley, retaining his British passport, tried to extend the vision of the Impressionists into England. Renoir was site manager – responsible for hanging the paintings in the actual exhibitions. Cezanne didn’t have a task – it took the others all their time and patience to get him to provide some paintings in the first place!
This particular painting has a spontaneity and straight-forwardness of touch that seem to imply that it was painted outdoors; Cezanne was just beginning to paint outdoors, with the encouragement of Pissarro. Where ever Cezanne painted it from - a boat or across on the other side – he’s brought the ground upon which the party is sitting, up towards the viewer, so that we can only catch a glimpse of the house beyond; this has the effect of bringing us closer, and invites us to look at the focus of the painting – where everybody is looking: down towards the end of the fishing rod, which we can’t actually see coz it’s behind the woman’s dress! Meanwhile, over on the right rests a bottle of wine on the end of the boat, from which the sleeping guy above, by the large tree, seems to have a glass or two. A lazy Sunday afternoon…wouldn’t it be nice!
Developed a hundred years after the Impressionists, Tuckman’s model of group development suggests five stages – forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. And I’m sure you can guess how the stages apply to the Impressionist group: their forming began in the 1860’s when they all met in Art-college; their storming happened in the cafes and bars of Montmartre, their norming was discovered in the aftermath of war, and determination for the future (1872); their performing was in the middle years of the 1870’s when they produced some of the finest Impressionist work; and their adjourning followed at the end of the decade, when they went their separate ways. But in that short time, this small band of people had changed the parameters of the human search for the expression of artistic beauty.
Monet would be devastated by the death of his young wife Camille in 1879; and could not help himself but capture her passing and his torment; I am always reminded of the Scream by Munch of 1893.
Camille Monet on her death-bed Claude Monet 1879
But he would re-marry, and with his paintings developing and selling, his large combined family would live happily in Giverny from 1880 for another 40 years, painting expansive water gardens, just as Cezanne was painting equally expansive bathers. As Cezanne would say: “Monet is just an eye; but, Oh my God, what an eye!”
It would take 140 years before the wedge between science, in this case the social sciences, and spirituality was bridged. Tuckman’s model of group development seems pretty obvious now: it matches the process of how groups are born, live and pass away. But it’s rather linear; it’s a description of what happens – and fair enough, a true description, but a limited one. What it doesn’t take account of is the depth of what is going on; that inner shift in the way we understand stuff, that shift in consciousness that underpins the movement towards beauty, truth and goodness.
This inner shift, from fighting the old to sensing and presencing an emerging future possibility, is at the core of all deep leadership work today. It’s a shift that requires us to expand our thinking from the head to the heart. It is a shift from an ego-system awareness that cares about the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that cares about the well-being of all, including oneself.
…the possibility of profound personal, societal, and global renewal has never been more real than it is today. It’s something we can feel in many places across the planet. It’s not just about firefighting and tinkering with the surface of structural change. It’s not just about replacing one mindset that no longer serves us with another. It’s a future that requires us to tap into a deeper level of our humanity, of who we really are and who we want to be as a society. It’s a future that we can sense, feel, and actualize by shifting the inner place from which we operate. It’s a future that, in these moments of disruption, begins to presence itself through us.
Otto Scharmer, Theory U: leading from the emerging future, 2016