Violettomania

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Le Printemps 1886 Claude Monet

“Violettomania” was the term used by early critics to describe what they felt was an overuse of the tones of violet and blue in the paintings of the French Impressionists. Novelist and art critic, Louis Edmond Duranty (1833 - 1880) was the first to describe this radically new style of painting as “procédent presque toujours d’une gamme violette et bleuâtre” (proceeding almost always from a violet or bluish range). Another commentator went further after seeing the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, writing that it had the overall effect of a worm-eaten Roquefort cheese. (The Fitzwilliam Museum)

Indeed, one of the Impressionists, Édouard Manet, came to believe that violet was the actual color of the atmosphere. He said, “It is violet. Fresh air is violet.” The supposition was put forth as well that perhaps Claude Monet could see beyond the visible spectrum of light, past the color blue and into the invisible ult…