Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Judit Borbély: The Writer's Paintings and the Painter's Scenes

'partisans of unadorned reality and absolute foes to arrangement, embellishment, selection' (The Painter's Eye 114), for, as he continues, 'they send detail to the dogs and concentrate themselves on general expression' (The Painter's Eye 115). Yet, by the time he was writing The Ambassadors (1903), he had learned to appreciate them and incorporated their technique in his works, especially in The Ambassadors

, which is extremely rich in impressionist elements.) With Strether's arrival at the Cheval Blanc, the village inn, we have left the Lambinet behind and entered Impressionism, which can be seen in several points. Firstly, the setting

, i.e. an inn by a river with a small pavilion at the end of the garden 'with a couple of benches and a table, a protecting rail and a projecting roof' {The Ambassadors 459), almost overhanging the grey-blue stream, is typical of the Impressionists. Secondly, the subject of a crowd in a cafe, in a public garden or in an open-air dance place was frequently represented in impressionist paintings; I have already mentioned Manet's Music in the Tuileries, to which let me add now Renoir's Moulin de la Galette

; also, a boating party on the river was a similarly favourite subject with the Impressionists, as we can see in Manet's Argenteuil, the boafinen or In a boat and in Rowers at Chatou by Renoir. Finally, as regards the figures appearing in the painting, as opposed to the peasant characters busily doing their daily work who may come to be represented in a Barbizon landscape, the pictures by Manet and Renoir and other Impressionists show city dwellers (it is enough to have a look at their clothes) who, for a change, have left their usual urban existence to enjoy the simple pleasures of an excursion. It is Renoir's Rowers at Chatou that seems to be the closest to the given scene in The Ambassadors, when Strether sitting in the pavilion catches sight of a boat advancing round the bend: They came slowly, floating down, evidently directed to the landingplace near their spectator and presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two persons for whom his hostess was already preparing a meal. For two very happy persons he found himself straightway taking them

—a young man in shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from some other place [...]. The air quite thickened, at their approach, with further intimations; the intimation that they were expert, familiar, frequent [...]. They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt

—and it made them but the more idyllic [...]. (461) 130