Impressionism
1860 -1900
Paris had developed into a modern
metropolis ,its population doubling in half a century, as progressive
industrialization spread. The rebuilding of the city had become an
urgent matter representative capital Napoleon III testimony to his
imperial power. A network of boulevards, lined with large town-houses
was laid over the cramped city center. This resulted in the workers
moving with the industry to the edges of the city , and the center
became a haven for the elegant bourgeois, of artists and pleasure .
A
group of young realists, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred
Sisley, and Frederic Bazille, who had studied under Charles Gleyre,
became friends and often painted together. They gathered at the Cafe
Guerbois, where the discussions were often led by Edouard Manet, whom
the younger artists greatly admired. They were soon joined by Camille
Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, and Armand Guillaumin.
Academie
des Beaux-Arts dominated French art. The Academe was the preserver of
traditional French painting standards of content and style.
Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued
(landscape and still life were not), and the Academe preferred
carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined
closely. Colour was somber and conservative, and traces of brush
strokes were suppressed, concealing the artist's personality,
emotions, and working techniques. In 1863, the jury rejected Manet's
'The Luncheon on the Grass' primarily because it depicted a nude
woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury
routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings,
they condemned Manet for placing a realistic nude in a contemporary
setting. The jury's severely worded rejection of Manet's painting
appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected
works that year perturbed many French artists.
After
Emperor Napoleon III saw the rejected works of 1863, he decreed that
the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the 'Salon of
the Refused' was organized. While many viewers came only to laugh,
the 'Salon of the Refused' drew attention to the existence of a new
tendency in art and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon.
In
total, thirty artists participated in their first exhibition, held in
April 1874 at the studio of the photographer Nadar. The critical
response was mixed. Monet and Cezanne received the harshest attacks.
Critic and humorist Louis Leroy wrote a scathing review in the
newspaper Le Charivari in which, making wordplay with the title of
Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise , he gave the artists the name by
which they became 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. 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. They exhibited together eight
times between 1874 and 1886.
Impressionist painting characteristics
include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open
composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing
qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time),
common, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial
element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual
angles.
They constructed their pictures from
freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours,
following the example of painters such as Eugene Delacroix and J. M.
W. Turner. They also painted realistic scenes of modern life, and
often painted outdoors.
They portrayed overall visual effects
instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes
of mixed and pure unmixed colour, not blended smoothly or shaded, as
was customary, to achieve an effect of intense colour vibration.
Encompassing what its adherents argued
was a different way of seeing, it is 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. They
were more interested in painting landscape and contemporary life than
in recreating historical or mythological scenes.
“Impression Sunrise”, 1872 , oil on
canvas, 48 × 63 cm Claude Monet
Claude Monet ,(14 November 1840 – 5
December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting , and
the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's
philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially
as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is
derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise by the
critic Louis Leroy in a satirical review published in the Parisian
newspaper Le Charivari. He wrote:
“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 painting's subject is the harbor of Le
Havre in France, using very loose brush strokes that suggest rather
than delineate it .
“Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground. ... They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn't really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: 'Put Impression.' “
“Bal du moulin de la Galette” , 1876 ,
oil on canvas , 131 × 175 cm Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was a
French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the
Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially
feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final
representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to
Watteau."
This is one of Impressionism's most
celebrated masterpieces. The painting depicts a typical Sunday
afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in
Paris. In the late 19th century, working class Parisians would dress
up and spend time there dancing, drinking, and eating galettes into
the evening.
Like other early works of Renoir , Bal du
moulin de la Galette , is a typical Impressionist snapshot of real
life. It shows a richness of form, a fluidity of brush stroke, and a
flickering light.
"Luncheon on the Grass" , 1863,
oil on canvas, 208 × 264 cm Edouard Manet
Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883) was a
French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach
modern and postmodern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the
transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Rejected by the Salon jury of 1863, this
work was exhibited at the 1863 Salon des Refuses , where the painting
sparked public controversy.
The roughly painted background lacks depth
, giving the viewer the impression that the scene is not taking place
outdoors, but in a studio. This impression is reinforced by the use
of broad "photographic” light, which casts almost no shadows
and is inconsistent and unnatural. The man on the right wears a flat
hat with a tassel, of a kind normally worn indoors.
Dancer
Taking a Bow (The Star) , 1878, pastel and gouache on
paper , 81 × 66 cm Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (1834 –1917) was a French
artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He
is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of
his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders of
Impressionism, although he rejected the term, and preferred to be
called a realist.
Technically, Degas differs from the
Impressionists in that he "never adopted the Impressionist color
fleck", and he continually belittled their practice of painting
plein air.
He never married and spent the last years
of his life, nearly blind, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris
before dying in September 1917.
Bibliography
Internet
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/impressionism/
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/australianimpressionism/
http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet
http://www.pierre-auguste-renoir.org/
http://www.abcgallery.com/R/renoir/renoir.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/498200/Pierre-Auguste-Renoir
http://www.manetedouard.org/
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/manet/
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/manet.html
http://www.impressionism.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_with_a_Parasol_-_Madame_Monet_and_Her_Son
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression,_Sunrise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Édouard_Manet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_du_moulin_de_la_Galette
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_loge_(painting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Books
Anna .Krausse, The story of painting:
from the renaissance to the , 1995
Reader's Digest ,Great Painters and
Great Paintings , 1965
Gottfried Boehm, , Monet and modernism
, 2001
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