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IMPRESSIONISM. The Impressionists painted in the second half of the 19 th Century. Impressionism is characterized by attention to the effects of atmosphere and light on subject matter.
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The Impressionists painted in the second half of the 19th Century.
Impressionism is characterized by attention to the effects of atmosphere and light on subject matter.
Impressionists employed short, quick, often visible brushstrokes rather than using smooth, slick brushwork.
Soft blurred edges replaced the hard precise edges of the Neoclassic period.
Blues and violets replaced grays and browns in figures and landscapes. Impressionist paintings are more vibrantly and brilliantly coloured than the work of any period that preceded it.
Features of Impressionism (continued) • Artists painted on site rather than in their studios, trying to capture local effects of light as opposed to staging scenes and controlling the lighting.
Impressionist artists were more interested in contemporary subject matter than in historical or religious subjects. Impressionism shows us the train stations, cafés and theatres of the late 19th Century.
They were greatly influenced by the development of photography in the last half of the 19th century, both in the “snapshot” spontaneity of their compositions and in the unconventional angles and viewpoints that photography suggested.
Japanese prints were another influence. These prints became quite popular in Europe in the late 19th Century. Impressionist artists learned from them how to create dynamic compositions with cropped figures, elegant patterns of line, and flat areas of delicate colour.
Major Impressionist Artists Claude Monet • Edgar Degas • Mary Cassatt • Auguste Renoir • Camille Pisarro
Monet is sometimes credited with the “invention” of impressionist painting. Fascinated by the way colours changed depending on the light at various times of day and in various seasons, he made study after study of simple haystacks in the fields.
He did the same with the façade of the great cathedral at Rouen, in northern France. He set up his studio in the front window of a shop facing the cathedral and spent months painting the stone façade in daylight, in shadow, at sunrise, and sunset, in cold winter light and in spring sunshine, teaching himself about the effects of light and atmosphere on the colours of objects.
Monet built himself a studio in the town of Giverny, and spent the last decades of his long life there painting the waterlilies in his pond, and the Japanese bridge in the garden.
Claude Monet • "Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows" Claude Monet
The magnificent water lily paintings are as long as 30 feet, and are now housed in a museum that was built to accommodate them – the Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. They are sumptuously painted masterpieces of colour and light.
Camille Pissaro • CAMILLE PISSARRO was born in 1830 on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. • His parents sent him to Paris at age 12 to a small boarding school where the director, seeing his interest in art, advised him to “take advantage of his life in the tropics by drawing coconut trees." When he returned to St. Thomas in 1847, this advice had been taken to heart:
He devoted all his spare time to making sketches, not only of coconut trees and other exotic plants, but also of the daily life surrounding him…the donkeys and their carts on the sunny roads, the Negro women doing their wash on the beaches or carrying jugs, baskets, or bundles on their heads. In these studies done from life he revealed himself to be a simple and sincere observer. (Wikipedia)
Since he could not obtain his father’s permission to devote himself to painting, he ran away back to Paris to pursue his love of art. • His early efforts to paint the effects of light were scorned by the art establishment of the time, who favoured the traditional painting techniques taught at the academies.
Then he met Monet and Cézanne -- and through them, a network of like-minded artists. • Unable to get their work approved for inclusion in the Salon exhibitions, Pissarro joined Monet and several other artists in 1874 to organize an independent exhibition. They called their show “Le Salon des Refuses” (the Salon of Rejected Work).
Pissarro and his fellows met with thunderous opposition from the established art community, which valued technical detail and photographic realism -- and expected the artist to idealize the subject; their new style was seen as absurd. Articles panning the exhibition coined the term "impressionist" as an insult.
Camille • Pissarro • Self Portrait
Edgar Degas • Degas was a masterful draughtsman. Unlike most of the other Impressionists he was concerned with line, form, and movement of the human body. • His famous paintings of dancers reveal this fascination with the human form.
Rather than presenting only idealized dancers, he gives us intimate glimpses of dancers resting, scratching, or stretching backstage
Degas • Degas often worked in pastels, as in this drawing of two dancers.
