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Impressionism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Art

   Paintings by Monet

   Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose
   association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their
   art in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from Claude
   Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). Critic Louis
   Leroy inadvertently coined the term in a satiric review published in Le
   Charivari.

   Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes,
   light colors, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing
   qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time),
   ordinary subject matter, and unusual visual angles.

   The influence of the Impressionists is thought to have spread beyond
   the art world, leading to Impressionist music and Impressionist
   literature.

   Impressionism also describes art done in this style, but outside of the
   late 19th century time period.

Overview

   Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the picture-making
   rules of academic painting. They began by giving colors, freely
   brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of
   painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the act of painting
   out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still lifes
   and portraits but also landscapes had been painted indoors, but the
   Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and
   transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. They used
   short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed colour, not smoothly
   blended as was the custom at the time. For example, instead of
   physically mixing yellow and blue paint, they placed unmixed yellow
   paint on the canvas next to unmixed blue paint, thus mixing the colors
   through our perception of them: creating the "impression" of green.
   Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall
   effects rather than details.

   Although the rise of Impressionism in France happened at a time when a
   number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the
   Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also
   exploring plein-air painting, the Impressionists developed new
   techniques that were specific to the movement. Encompassing what its
   adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it was an art of
   immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play
   of light expressed in a bright and varied use of colour.

   The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the
   Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if it did
   not meet with approval of the artistic establishment. By recreating the
   sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the
   subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms,
   Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which
   would follow, including Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.
   Paintings by Renoir

Beginnings

   In an atmosphere of change as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris and
   waged war, the Académie des beaux-arts dominated the French art scene
   in the middle of the 19th century. The Académie was the upholder of
   traditional standards for French painting, both in content and style.
   Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued
   (landscape and still life were not), and the Académie preferred
   carefully finished images which mirrored reality when closely examined.
   Colour was somber and conservative, and the traces of brush strokes
   were suppressed, concealing the artist's personality, emotions, and
   working techniques.

   The Académie held an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and
   artists whose work displayed in the show won prizes, garnered
   commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries
   reflected the values of the Académie, represented by the highly
   polished works of such artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre
   Cabanel.

   The young artists painted in a lighter and brighter style than most of
   the generation before them, extending further the realism of Gustave
   Courbet and the Barbizon school. They were more interested in painting
   landscape and contemporary life than in recreating scenes from history.
   Each year, they submitted their art to the Salon, only to see the
   juries reject their best efforts in favour of trivial works by artists
   working in the approved style. A core group of young realists, Claude
   Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille, who
   had studied under Charles Gleyre, became friends and often painted
   together. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and
   Armand Guillaumin.

   In 1863, the jury rejected The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur
   l'herbe) by Édouard Manet primarily because it depicted a nude woman
   with two clothed men on a picnic. While nudes were routinely accepted
   by the Salon when featured in historical and allegorical paintings, the
   jury condemned Manet for placing a realistic nude in a contemporary
   setting. The jury's sharply worded rejection of Manet's painting, as
   well as the unusually large number of rejected works that year, set off
   a firestorm among French artists. Manet was admired by Monet and his
   friends, and led the discussions at Café Guerbois where the group of
   artists frequently met.

   After seeing the rejected works in 1863, Emperor Napoleon III decreed
   that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the Salon
   des Refusés (Salon of the Refused) was organized. While many viewers
   came only to laugh, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to the
   existence of a new tendency in art, and attracted more visitors than
   the regular Salon.

   Artists' petitions requesting a new Salon des Refusés in 1867, and
   again in 1872, were denied. In April of 1874 a group consisting of
   Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot and Edgar
   Degas organized their own exhibition at the studio of the photographer
   Nadar. They invited a number of other progressive artists to exhibit
   with them, including the slightly older Eugène Boudin, whose example
   had first persuaded Monet to take up plein air painting years before.
   Another painter who greatly influenced Monet and his friends, Johan
   Jongkind, declined to participate, as did Manet. In total, thirty
   artists participated in the exhibition, the first of eight that the
   group would present between 1874 and 1886.

   The critical response was mixed, with Monet and especially Cézanne
   bearing the harshest attacks. Critic and humorist Louis Leroy wrote a
   scathing review in the Le Charivari newspaper in which, making wordplay
   with the title of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression,
   soleil levant), he gave the artists the name by which they would become
   known. Derisively titling his article The Exhibition of the
   Impressionists, Leroy declared that Monet's painting was at most a
   sketch and could hardly be termed a finished work.

   He wrote, in the form of a dialog between viewers,

          Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself
          that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in
          it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in
          its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.

   The term "Impressionists" quickly gained favor with the public. It was
   also accepted by the artists themselves, even though they were a
   diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their
   spirit of independence and rebellion. Monet, Sisley, Morisot and
   Pissarro may be considered the "purest" Impressionists, in their
   consistent pursuit of an art of spontaneity, sunlight, and color. Degas
   rejected much of this, as he believed in the primacy of drawing over
   colour and belittled the practice of painting outdoors. Renoir turned
   against Impressionism for a time in the 1880s, and never entirely
   regained his commitment to its ideas. Édouard Manet, despite his role
   as a leader to the group, never abandoned his liberal use of black as a
   colour, and never participated in the Impressionist exhibitions. He
   continued to submit his works to the Salon, where his Spanish Singer
   had won a 2nd class medal in 1861, and he urged the others to do
   likewise, arguing that "the Salon is the real field of battle" where a
   reputation could be made.

   Among the artists of the core group (minus Bazille, who had died in the
   Franco-Prussian War in 1870), defections occurred as Cézanne, followed
   later by Renoir, Sisley and Monet, abstained from the group exhibitions
   in order to submit their works to the Salon. Disagreements arose from
   issues such as Guillaumin's membership in the group, championed by
   Pissarro and Cézanne against opposition from Monet and Degas, who
   thought him unworthy. Degas created dissention by insisting on the
   inclusion of realists who did not represent Impressionist practices,
   leading Monet in 1880 to accuse the Impressionists of "opening doors to
   first-come daubers". The group divided over the invitation of Signac
   and Seurat to exhibit with them in 1886. Pissarro was the only artist
   to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions.

   The individual artists saw few financial rewards from the Impressionist
   exhibitions, but their art gradually won a degree of public acceptance.
   Their dealer Durand-Ruel played a major role in this as he kept their
   work before the public and arranged shows for them in London and New
   York. Although Sisley would die in poverty in 1899, Renoir had a great
   Salon success in 1879. Financial security came to Monet in the early
   1880s and to Pissarro by the early 1890s. By this time the methods of
   Impressionist painting, in a diluted form, had become commonplace in
   Salon art.

Impressionist techniques

     * Short, thick strokes of paint are used to quickly capture the
       essence of the subject rather than its details.
     * Colors are applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible,
       creating a vibrant surface. The optical mixing of colors occurs in
       the eye of the viewer.
     * Grays, and dark tones, are produced by mixing complimentary colors.
       In pure Impressionism the use of black paint is avoided.
     * Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive
       applications to dry, producing softer edges and intermingling of
       colour.
     * Impressionist paintings do not exploit the transparency of thin
       paint films (glazes) which earlier artists built up carefully to
       produce effects. The surface of an Impressionist painting is
       typically opaque.
     * The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to
       the reflection of colors from object to object.
     * In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly
       painted with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces,
       giving a sense of freshness and openness that was not captured in
       painting previously. (Blue shadows on snow inspired the technique.)

   Painters throughout history had occasionally used these methods, but
   Impressionists were the first to use all of them together and with such
   boldness. Earlier artists whose works display these techniques include
   Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, and J.
   M. W. Turner. French painters who prepared the way for Impressionism
   include the Romantic colorist Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the
   realists Gustave Courbet, and painters of the Barbizon school such as
   Theodore Rousseau. The Impressionists learned much from the work of
   Camille Corot and Eugène Boudin, who painted from nature in a style
   that was close to Impressionism, and who befriended and advised the
   younger artists.

   Impressionists took advantage of the mid-century introduction of
   premixed paints in tubes (resembling modern toothpaste tubes) which
   allowed artists to work more spontaneously both outdoors and indoors.
   Previously, each painter made his or her own paints by grinding and
   mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil.

Content and composition

   Before the Impressionists other painters, notably such 17th century
   Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had focused on common subjects, but their
   approach to composition was traditional. They arranged their
   compositions in such a way that the main subject commanded the viewer's
   attention. The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and
   background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often
   resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by
   chance. Photography was in fact gaining popularity, and as cameras
   became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography
   inspired Impressionists to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting
   lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people.

   Another major influence was Japanese art prints ( Japonism), which had
   originally come into the country as wrapping paper for imported goods.
   The art of these prints contributed significantly to the "snapshot"
   angles and unconventional compositions which are a characteristic of
   the movement.

   Edgar Degas was both an avid photographer and a collector of Japanese
   prints. His The Dance Class (La classe de danse) of 1874 shows both
   influences in its asymmetrical composition. The dancers are seemingly
   caught off guard in various awkward poses, leaving an expanse of empty
   floor space in the lower right quadrant.

Post-Impressionism

   Post-Impressionism developed from Impressionism. From the 1880s several
   artists began to develop different precepts for the use of colour,
   pattern, form and line, derived from the Impressionist example: Vincent
   Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
   These artists were slightly younger than the Impressionists, and their
   work is known as post-Impressionism. Some of the original Impressionist
   artists also ventured into this new territory; Camille Pissarro briefly
   painted in a pointillist manner, and even Monet abandoned strict plein
   air painting. Paul Cézanne, who participated in the first and third
   Impressionist exhibitions, developed a highly individual vision
   emphasizing pictorial structure, and he is more often called a
   post-Impressionist. Although these cases illustrate the difficulty of
   assigning labels, the work of the original Impressionist painters can
   by definition be categorized as Impressionism.

Painters known as Impressionists

   The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France,
   listed alphabetically, were:
     * Frédéric Bazille
     * Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces
       with them in the mid 1870s)
     * Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in
       four Impressionist exhibitions)
     * Paul Cézanne (though he later broke away from the Impressionists)
     * Edgar Degas (a realist who despised the term "Impressionist" but is
       considered one due to his loyalty to the group)
     * Armand Guillaumin
     * Édouard Manet (who did not regard himself as an Impressionist, but
       is generally considered one)
     * Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one
       who most clearly embodies their aesthetic)
     * Berthe Morisot
     * Camille Pissarro
     * Pierre-Auguste Renoir
     * Alfred Sisley

   Among the close associates of the Impressionists were several painters
   who adopted their methods to some degree. These include Giuseppe De
   Nittis, an Italian artist living in Paris who participated in the first
   Impressionist exhibit at Degas' invitation, although the other
   Impressionists disparaged his work. Eva Gonzalès was a follower of
   Manet who did not exhibit with the group. Walter Sickert, an English
   friend of Degas, was also influenced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
   an American-born painter who played a part in Impressionism although he
   did not join the group and preferred grayed colors. Federico
   Zandomeneghi was another friend of Degas who showed with the
   Impressionists.

   By the early 1880s, Impressionist methods were affecting, at least
   superficially, the art of the Salon. Fashionable painters such as Jean
   Beraud and Henri Gervex found critical and financial success by
   brightening their palettes while retaining the smooth finish expected
   of Salon art. Works by these artists are sometimes casually referred to
   as Impressionism, despite their remoteness from actual Impressionist
   practice.

   As the influence of Impressionism spread beyond France, artists too
   numerous to list became identified as practitioners of the new style.
   Some of the more important examples are:
     * The American Impressionists, including Frederick Carl Frieseke,
       Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore
       Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir
     * Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, and Max Slevogt in Germany
     * Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov in Russia
     * Francisco Oller y Cestero, a native of Puerto Rico who was a friend
       of Pissarro and Cézanne
     * Laura Muntz Lyall, a Canadian artist
     * Władysław Podkowiński, a Polish Impressionist and symbolist
     * Nazmi Ziya Güran, who brought Impressionism to Turkey

Other visual artists known as Impressionists

   The sculptor Auguste Rodin is sometimes called an Impressionist for the
   way he used roughly modeled surfaces to suggest transient light
   effects. Pictorialist photographers whose work is characterized by soft
   focus and atmospheric effects have also been called Impressionists.
   Examples are Kirk Clendinning, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Robert Farber,
   Eduard Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence H. White.

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