Impressionism

A Bar at the Folies-Bergre ,

douard Manet, 1881-82, Oil on
canvas, 95.3 129.7 cm,
Courtauld Institute of Art,
London

The Salon jury of 1863 had been

exceptionally brutal and thousands
of paintings had been refused. To
counter these refusals, the Salon
des Refuses was established and it
was here that Dejeuner sur l'herbe
(also known as the Luncheon on
the Grass) was exhibited

a benchmark in academic
discussions of modern art. The
nude in Manet's painting was no
nymph, or mythological
being...she was a modern
Parisian women cast into a
contemporary setting with two
clothed man.

Many found this to be quite

vulgar and begged the question
"Who's for lunch?" The critics
also had much to say about
Manet's technical abilities. His
harsh frontal lighting and
elimination of mid tones rocked
ideas of traditional academic
training.

it is also important to
understand that not everyone
criticized Manet, for it was also
Dejeuner which set the stage for
the advent of Impressionism.

Photography in the nineteenth

century both challenged
painters to be true to nature and
encouraged them to exploit
aspects of the painting medium,
like color, that photography
lacked.

This divergence away from

photographic realism appears in
the work of a group of artists
who from 1874 to 1886
exhibited together,
independently of the Salon.

They became known as

Impressionists because a
newspaper critic thought they
were painting mere sketches or
impressions. The
Impressionists, however,
considered their works finished.

Realism meant to an
Impressionist that the painter
ought to record the most subtle
sensations of reflected light. In
capturing a specific kind of light,
this style conveys the notion of
a specific and fleeting moment
of time.

Impressionist painters like

Monet and Renoir recorded
each sensation of light with a
touch of paint in a little stroke
like a comma.

The public back then was upset

that Impressionist paintings
looked like a sketch and did not
have the polish and finish that
more fashionable paintings had.

applying the paint in tiny strokes

allowed Monet, Renoir, or Cassatt
to display color sensations openly,
to keep the colors unmixed and
intense, and to let the viewer's eye
mix the colors. The bright colors
and the active participation of the
viewer approximated the
experience of the scintillation of
natural sunlight.

The leaders of the independent

movement were Claude Monet,
August Renoir, Edgar Degas,
Berthe Morisot, and
Mary Cassatt.

Claude Monet

MONET IS REGARDED AS
THE IMPRESSIONIST par
excellence,

the impression, the stroke, the

contrast of colors, and the
consistency with which the
consequences of the Impressionist
ideas visible at the beginning of an
artist's career are elaborated in the
long course of that individual career
- make Monet's position central.

Monet, Claude
La cathedrale de Rouen, le portail,
temps gris (Rouen Cathedral, the
West Portal, Dull Weather)
dated 1894, painted 1892
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 25 5/8 in. (100 x 65 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

La cathedrale de Rouen, le portail

et la tour Saint-Romain, plein soleil,
harmonie bleue et or (Rouen
Cathedral, the West Portal and
Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight,
Harmony in Blue and Gold)
dated 1894, painted 1893
Oil on canvas
42 1/8 x 28 3/4 in. (107 x 73 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The River ( On the Bank of the

Seine, Bennecourt ), Claude
Monet, 1868, Oil on canvas,
81.8 x 100.5 cm, Art Institute of
Chicago, Chicago

Edgar Degas

The glass of Absinthe,

L'Absinthe, Edgar Degas,
1876 , Oil on canvas , 91.3
68.7 cm , Muse d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Renoir seems to have had the

enviable ability to see anything
as potentially of interest. More
than any of the Impressionists,
he found beauty and charm in
the modern sights of Paris.

. He does not go deep into the

substance of what he sees but
seizes upon its appearance,
grasping its generalities, which
then enables the spectator to
respond with immediate
pleasure.

He deliberately sets out to give the

impression, the sensation of
something, its generalities, its
glancing life. Maybe, ideally,
everything is worthy of attentive
scrutiny, but in practice there is no
time. We remember only what
takes our immediate notice as we
move along.

Many Impressionists painted

pleasant scenes of middle class
urban life, extolling the leisure time
that the industrial revolution had
won for middle class society. In
Renoir's luminous painting
Luncheon of the Boating Party, for
example, young men and women
eat, drink, talk, and flirt with a joy
for life that is reflected in sparkling
colors.

The sun filtered through the

orange striped awning colors
everything and everyone in the
party with its warm light. The
diners' glances cut across a
balanced and integrated
composition that reproduces a
very delightful scene of modem
middle class life.

The Ball at the Moulin de la

Galette, Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
1876, Oil on canvas, 130.7 x
175.3 cm, Muse dOrsay, Paris

Marry Cassatt

in Children on Shore, the

viewpoint from which the
subject is observed is low and
empathetic - the same level
from which a child would see.

Portrait of a Little Girl that

surround the figure seem to be
in motion; the floor lifts up, and
the chairs appear to have slid
into various, almost accidental
positions, not unlike that of the
young girl

..Cassatt had completely

absorbed from her Impressionist
colleagues Degas, and Renoir,
as well as her study of
Japanese prints, the modern
idea that the background of a
painting might be as significant
as the foreground.

Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot, French painter and

printmaker. She was associated
with Impressionism. She was born
in Bourges, the daughter of a
government official who was an
enthusiastic amateur painter and
supporter of the arts. She was also
the granddaughter of Fragonard.

Throughout her career Morisot

often represented a woman and
child in a park or garden, a
popular theme both in
Impressionist art and in modern
life painting for the Salon.

The motif figured prominently in

her relatively limited repertoire
of subjects taken from the world
of the modern, upper-middle
class woman, the sphere to
which she restricted herself
following the social conventions
and constraints of her gender
and class.

Her subjects were chosen from

her family and domestic circles
and from the places familiar to
her.

The Impressionists remained

realists in the sense that they
remained true to their
sensations of the object,
although they ignored many of
the old conventions for
representing the object "out
there."

But truthfulness for the

Impressionists lay in their
personal and subjective
sensations not in the "exact"
reproduction of an object for its
own sake

Post-Impressionism: (1885 1905)

The Post Impressionist period

came when several former
Impressionist painters became
dissatisfied with the movements
insistence on light and color. The
post-Impressionists aspired to fine
more depth in the roles of color,
form and solidity in painting.

Post Impressionism was a

continuation of the Impressionist
movement, but rejected the
limitations of its predecessor. The
terms was first used by English art
critic Roger Fry describing the work
of painters such as Paul Cezanne,
Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin,
Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec

The term does not define a

singular style or approach, it
encompasses all artists that
whose main goal was to
express more than a visual
interpretation. Their aim was to
portray emotion and intellect in
addition to imagery.

The Post-Impressionists often exhibited

together, but, unlike the Impressionists,
who began as a close-knit, convivial
group, they painted mainly alone.
Czanne painted in isolation at Aix-enProvence in southern France; his
solitude was matched by that of Paul
Gauguin, who in 1891 took up
residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh,
who painted in the countryside at Arles.

Vincent Van Gogh 'Starry

Night' 1889

Wheatfield and Cypress trees,

Vincent van Gogh, 1889, Oil on
canvas
72.3 91.3 cm, The National
Gallery, London

Paul Gauguin

The Vision After the Sermon

(Jacob Wrestling with the
Angel), Paul Gauguin, Oil on
Canvas , 73 92.7 cm (28
36 in), National Gallery of
Scotland, Scotland

Paul Gaugin
'When Are You Getting
Married?'

Paul Cezanne

Still Life with Apples in a Bowl, Paul

Czanne, C. 1879-82, Oil on
canvas, 43.5 x 54 cm, New
Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Still Life with Apples in a Bowl,

Paul Czanne, C. 1879-82, Oil
on canvas, 43.5 x 54 cm, New
Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen

Czanne, one of the creators

of modern art, was called the
``solidifier of Impressionism''.

he creates space and depth of

perspective by means of planes of
color, which are freely associated
and at the same time contrasted
and compared. The facets which
are thus produced create not just
one but many perspectives, and in
this way volume comes once again
to dominate the composition, no
longer a product of the line but
rather of the color itself

. His still-lifes, in their simplicity

and delicate tonal harmony, are
a typical work and thus ideal for
an understanding of Czanne's
art.

Georges Seurat

The bathers (Une Baignade,

Asnires ), Georges-Pierre
Seurat, 1884 , Oil on canvas ,
202 300.3 cm , National
Gallery, London

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec