George Moore's A Modern Lover : Introducing the French Impressionists to London

George Moore's first novel, A Modern Lover (1883), is not written in French, and is set mostly in London not Paris, yet it contains a fascinating record of his Paris years, and the origins of what was a lifelong love affair with the French Impressionists and their pictures. Although Moore claimed an easy familiarity with Impressionism, mapping his exposure to the artists and their pictures is problematic, as he showed little concern for historical accuracy, which he considered irrelevant to his concerns as a writer whose aim was to create an impression. In his early novels he happily altered dates of Impressionist exhibitions or presented several exhibitions as one event. However, he did draw on his own autobiographical recollections, describing recognizable Impressionist pictures, and recounting conversations with Impressionist artists. A Modern Lover contains descriptions of Impressionist pictures that Moore could only have seen at the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876, the Third Exhibition in 1877, the Fourth Exhibition in 1879 and the Seventh Exhibition in 1882.¹

Moore was a committed propagator of French culture — and a noted plagiarist whose borrowings from the French were a way of proselytizing for their art and literature. No more so is this the case than in his first novel. After meeting Zola in April 1879, and rushing to read his novels, he found his calling as Zola's English disciple, writing novels in English.² Paul Alexis, who first met Moore in Manet's studio, wrote: Moore 'poussé par l'démon d'être un vrai écrivain, influencé par la littérature française contemporaine et notre mouvement naturaliste, mon jeune Anglish comprit qu'un écrivain naturaliste n'pouvait avoir d'existence et d'valeur que sur le sol natal dans l'milieu où la nature l'avait fait pousser, et au moyen de la langue indigène'.³

Zola's influence on A Modern Lover has been discussed elsewhere.⁴ What has not been considered, and as this article will show, is that Manet — 'l'ami que nous aimions, le peintre dont nous adorons le génie' as Moore wrote — and the Impressionists were an equally valuable source of inspiration for the novel.⁵

In A Modern Lover there are no French artists. Nor are the Moderns, who are given English names, and who paint French Impressionist pictures, the central characters. That honour befalls Lewis Seymour, a somewhat unpleasant artist who could have been a Modern, but opts for the more comfortable path of attaching himself to women who will further his career through financial or social advancement. Lewis is reputedly based on Lewis Weldon Hawkins, who Moore met while both men were studying at Julian's, the private art atelier that coached students in gaining success as Salon painters. The punitive association of Lewis Seymour's name is clear, but Moore is also asserting an authorial presence here, by presenting an early ironic self-invention inspired by one of the less successful aspects of his own past.⁶ The 'languid' classicism of Lewis's pictures and his feminine appearance make him easily recognisable as an Aesthete, an artistic self that Moore had dallied with while living in London, before he took up writing and discovered Impressionism.

The exquisitely beautiful, if 'a little effeminate', Lewis has wide, 'too developed' feminine-looking hips, 'always, in a man, the sign of a weak and lascivious nature', Moore informs us on page two of the novel.⁷ Equipped with these wide hips, Lewis propels himself into the arms of three strong women — the working-class shop girl Gwynnie Lloyd, the upper-middle class Mrs Bethan, a woman of independent means, who has separated from her promiscuous and cruel husband, and the aristocratic Lady Helen, who Lewis eventually marries. Their financial support and unstinting loyalty make Lewis a success. Narrow shouldered and wide-hipped, Moore struggled with his own problems of gender identity, but Lewis is more than a projection of his loathing of his own body image. Wide hips were one of the identifying characteristics in caricatures of the Aesthetic male artist, popularized by George DuMaurier...