UNIT 4
Impressionism is a style of art that presents an immediate impression of an object or event. Impressionist painters try to show what the eye sees at a glance, rather than what they know or feel about the object or incident. They try to reproduce light as it appears to the eye when reflected from the surface of things. For this reason, many impressionist paintings have an effect of vibrating brilliance. Some painters achieve this effect by applying paint in small individual strokes of pure colour, instead of mixing it on the palette. There are impressionist works of music, literature, and sculpture, but impressionism is most important in the art of painting.
French impressionism. Painters and other artists have created impressionistic works of art in several periods of history. But the term impressionism is applied chiefly to the work of a group of French artists who revolutionized painting with shimmering, colourful pictures. These artists, who included Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Edgar Degas, created their most important work from about 1870 to about 1910. They held their first exhibition together in Paris 1874. It was the first instance of a group-show by the “Anonymous Cooperative Society of Actors, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers” run by the participating artists independently of official circles. Thirty-one artists took part in the exhibition, whom the critics referred to by the generic term “naturalists”. The name impressionism comes from Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise (1870), shown at that exhibition. The artists took the name after a critic used it mockingly to describe all the exhibited works.
The French impressionists were influenced by the realist movement in painting of the mid-1800’s, and by the scientific study of light and colour, which gained importance at the same time. Impressionists also studied the then new science of photography, along with Japanese prints, newly introduced into Europe. Both these art forms showed the impressionists how to frame and use space differently in their compositions.
The impressionists favoured compositions that seemed informal and spontaneous. They preferred to work outdoors, in the natural light. Monet, in particular, often painted the same subject several times in different atmospheric situations to show how colours and surface effects change at various times of day. The impressionists painted rapidly rather than developing their paintings later in studios from studies and sketches. Most art writers of the time strongly criticized impressionist techniques, considering them evidence of sloppy workmanship. The critics considered impressionist paintings an insult to viewers because they were expected to accept apparently unfinished art as a “real” painting.
The sketchiness of impressionist painting, with its visible brushstrokes, draws the viewer’s attention to the surface and technique of the artwork. The viewer thus becomes aware of the painting as an object in itself, rather than a “window” onto the subject being portrayed. In this way the impressionists prepared the way for much abstract art of the 1900’s.
One of the notable features of impressionist painting was its attention to the life of its time. Today, people often think of the impressionists as painters of sunlit landscapes and rural scenes. But these artists also portrayed industrial developments they saw around them. These subjects included railway trains and stations; iron bridges; wharves, canals, and barges; and factory buildings whose smoking chimneys often formed part of the landscape. They painted city life in Paris, showing people in everyday dress. Their landscapes are frequently set in the suburbs near Paris, where crowds of city dwellers would come for a weekend in the country.
The most important French impressionists are, in chronological order, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, Alfred Sisley, Monet, Renoir, and Berthe Morisot. Pissarro and Sisley are best known for their French countryside and river scenes and their Parisian street scenes. Degas, unlike most impressionists, did not use the divided colour technique. However, his scenes of ballet dancers and horse races seem spontaneous and immediate. Renoir loved to show the effects of sunlight on figures and flowers. Morisot is known for her delicate portrayals of mothers and children.
Impressionism did not take the form either of a school or of a close-knit homogenous group of artists identifying themselves with a clearly formulated theory. Rather, Impressionism was a happy meeting of a number of very different artistic personalities sharing similar feelings and the same goal, that of expressing themselves outside the trite and closed environment represented by the officially sanctioned art of the public Salons.