About Our Impressionist Paintings
Impressionism started in the 19th century and the name comes from the title of a piece of artwork by Claud Monet called 'Impressionism Sunrise'. Louis Leroy was credited with having coined the term 'Impressionist art' . The hallmarks of Impressionist paintings include thin brushstrokes and an emphasis on depicting light accurately, such as how the sunrise lights part of the sky brighter closer to the sun. Impressionist art was followed by music and literature of the same style. Impressionist art captures how humans perceive movements and often depicts unusual visual angles. Impressionist art was a bit revolutionary, not following the academic styles that were popular at the time. They stepped outside the studio and stopped creating still life paintings, instead choosing to step outside into the real world to capture modern life through the eyes of an artist. Impressionist art is complicated, yet simple and appealing for those who like the complicated styles of abstract art and those who like the bright colors of floral art.
The second half of the 19th century spawned a
wide diversity of stylistic trends in painting and brought forth a number of
highly distinctive personalities. The very fact that so many different terms
are associated with this period – Salon painting, Impressionism, Pointillism, Historicism,
Pre-Raphaelites, Jugendstil, Art Nouveau and Belle Epoch – bears witness to the
sheer variety of artistic movements.
In France, inspired by the revolutionary paintings of Manet,
the impressionists shook off the fetters of a rigid and out-moded artistic
canon and determined the subject matter and compositional organisation of their
paintings, themselves; Monet and Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley painted what they
wanted as they wanted. Others soon followed suit, including Liebermann and
Corinth in Germany and Cassatt and Chase in the USA.
The Pre-Raphaelites in England, Millais and Rossetti among
them, called for a more profound and reflective intellectual approach to art
and paved the way for the decoratively ornamental style known as Art Nouveau
and its German-Austrian equivalent, Jugendstil, which was embodied in its
purest form by the work of Klimt, while Symbolists like Moreau conjured visions
from the world of dreams and the realms of imagination.
Dynamic brushwork and a highly expressive handling of colour
are the predominant features of Van Gogh’s paintings. Gauguin’s images of the
South Seas represent a journey of discovery to a more primeval life, while
Cezanne’s autonomy of form and colour brought him widespread recognition as the
father of modern art. Impressionism and Art Nouveau are terms used to stake out
the boundaries of a development in painting that took place within a period of
about five decades, from the mid 19th century to the early years of
the 20th century. On the one hand there was so called Salon
painting, art cloaked in traditional means, whose meticulously crafted and
often brilliantly executed works reflected a conservative attitude that did not
question the prevailing order. On the other hand a new painting was beginning
to emerge whose creative freedom and forceful impact undermined conventional
structures and pointed towards the dawn of a new era.
Although we have become accustomed to talking of stylistic
pluralism as a 20th century phenomenon, it can already be observed
in the 19th century when a number of stylistic directions developed
in rapid succession and at times even simultaneously. The origins of these
styles are often difficult to trace. Some of them were full of innovative
vitality and paved the way for subsequent developments, while others were
merely the emasculated remnants of a movement whose energies were already spent.
A few key words suffice to indicate just how heterogeneous the situation was in
the field of painting during this period: Salon Painting – Impressionism – Historicism –
Pre-Raphaelites – Post –Impressionism – Japonisme-Symbolism – Fin de Siecle-
Jugendstil – Art Nouveau-Belle Époque.
Around the mid 19th century, the world was highly
Euro-centric. Europe was seen as the model of progress, and its colonies,
friendly states and even countries subjugated by force recognised European civilisation and culture, whereas Europe continued, as it
had done ever since the discovery of distant lands, to plunder the treasures of
foreign lands for things of value, exotic rarities and fashionable articles. Since the reign of Louis XlV, France had
embodied the very epitome of elegant life in the eyes of the European courts,
aristocracy, and Haute Bourgeoisie – a reputation it continued to savour in
spite of a change of ruler, a revolution, a new empire and even a republic.
Finally in the second half of the 19th century, Paris was the
exciting and scintillating centre of the art world, and justly so.
A number of favourable circumstance had secured France and
thereby Paris, a foremost position in the world of art, which it was to
maintain for many years, well in to the 20th century.
Cafes and restaurants played an important part in cultural life,
and were often places of debate and lively discussion rather than mere watering
places. Cafe Fleurus, decorated with
murals by Corot, was a favourite meeting place amongst the students of Charles
Gleyre.
At the Ercole des Beaux-Arts, the studio of Charles Gleyre was
regarded as the most liberal. Though Gleyre himself painted very much in-line
with contemporary taste, he did not seek to impose this style on his students
in anyway, preferring to allow them to develop their own skills. His classes
were most popular especially with artists eager to explore new avenues in
painting. In the 1860s, these places
attracted the young painters Monet, Frederic Bazille, Sisley, Renoir and Camille
Pissarro. These were the artists who were to develop the purest form of
Impressionism, which reached its zenith in the 1870s and 1880s and, for several
decades constituted the “new Painting” that swelled to become a broad
international movement and paved the way for the art of the future.
Monet had come from Le Havre where he had been introduced to
Plein-air painting by the amiably helpful, slightly older Eugene Boudin
(1824-1898 and had learned to observe various different light conditions. He
passed on what he learned to his friends and persuaded them to take up the experiment
of Plein-air painting so disdained by the traditionalists.
Brought together by their common quest for a new spirit in
painting and by their mutual admiration and friendship, an increasing number of
painters, writers and musicians, as well as other artists and critics as well
as a few collectors soon joined their circles. But it was Monet with his ideas and paintings,
who made the most decisive contribution to Impressionism. The fascination of capturing a fleeting
moment, the observation and reproduction of colours and surface appearances
changing under the influence of natural light became an increasingly important
aim in his works. Monet banned linearity
and stark planarity from his paintings and relaxed his brushwork until it
resembled scumbled daubs.
Pissarro and Sisley were closest in style to Monet, both in
their choice of motif and overall organisation, and to Bazille, who died in the
Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Renoir, with whom they frequently explored the
same motifs, worked entirely according to the increasingly clearly defined principles
of Impressionism.
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