PAINTING A REVOLUTION Claude Monet: "Impression: Rising Sun" (1872). Paris. "The Thames and Parliament" (1904). Paris.

Pierre Auguste Renoir: "Mrs. Monet Reading Le Figaro" (1872). Lisbon. Edgar Degas: "On the Beach" (1876). London. Alfred Sisley: "Bridge at Hampton Court" (1874). Cologne. In April 15, 1874 opened its doors in Paris an exhibition of paintings from various artists who knew each other and who didn't like the official painting hat was then developed in France. This group of Batignolles, named because coffee shop which was met in this street, they even found a cooperative society from which they could address, among other things, the defense of their own positions and ideas in the field painting and the organization of an exhibition of his works, rejected in official environments. So, in the exhibition included 39 artists and critics were devastating, resulting in sales almost nonexistent. Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Auguste Renoir were among the authors who began to be called Impressionists, scornfully, precisely by a Monet painting contained in the sample, "Printing: Rising Sun ". This first "Hall of the Impressionists" followed by two, in 1877 and 1879, while criticism was firm in their positions. The group may dissolve and its members follow different paths, but the most prominent concluded reaching for critics and the public. But what raised the Impressionists that made them be so criticized and, later, so admired? We are witnessing a curious pictorial revolution. Curious because Impressionist painting remains realistic revolutionary because it raises a whole new way of conceiving the purpose of painting. For these artists, the most important thing is the light, something so ethereal that came attracting the attention of the most important artists from the Middle Ages. Painting the light and how it is reflected in the objects is the biggest interest of the Impressionists. Therefore, what is painted is by definition brief because of the changes in natural light. What is done, though not always, is the use of pure colors, hoping that the viewer's eye is where the mix is going to happen, applying the color theory recently developed. The light forces impressionists to go out to the field, the sea, paint outdoors (en plein air), leaving the study. So in a general catalog of these artists in absolute predominate landscaping. Usually employ a loose brush and thick, with colors applied as they come from the paint, and they run away from the chiaroscuro. And as interested in the brief of things, sometimes they are painted several times (serialism) to leave us a chronicle of how the light is constantly changing. So in a society that was already developing the photgraphy (created in 1870) impressionists opened new paths to painting and showed that the possibility of innovation in art is almost infinite. For them, the color, each color, it was just a form of light. And with these approaches lit up the atmosphere of a city, Paris, and reaching its absolute primacy in the contemporary world of art. By 1880 the group of Impressionists was practically disbanded and some members were against each other. But the work was done. Impressionism.

Precedents: Medieval: Piero Della Francesca. Modern: Fawn Da Vinci, Velazquez, Goya. Contemporary: English watercolorists. Context: France 1870. Invention of photography. Academic painting, traditional and realistic. 1874: Hall of the Impressionists. Basic features: Applying the theory of colors. Interest reflect light on objects Use of loose brush Elimination of shadow and chiaroscuro. Successive representations of the same space