Category: Impressionism

Introduction

Impressionism was an art movement that took place in the 19^th century. It had a humble beginning: started as an informal association of Paris-based artists, who had begun displaying their work publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement has its origins in the famous work of Claude Monet, called Impression, Sunrise, which led the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review he wrote in the French newspaper, Le Charivari. He termed Monet’s work a sketch which seemed unfinished: “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” (Rewald, 1973, p. 323).

Impressionism was heavily inspired by the Romantic colorist Eugene Delacroix, the principal agent behind realism Gustave Courbet and painters belonging to the Barbizon school such as Theodore Rousseau. Other artists who paved the way for Impressionism were Camille Corot and Eugene Boudin, as they owned a style similar to Impressionism and imparted wisdom and knowledge to younger artists (“Impressionism”).

Impressionist painting is characterized by prominent brushstrokes, an open arrangement of elements, visible use of light and its changing qualities (which is often used to emphasize the passage of time), very trite subject matter, the employment of unconventional visual angles, and the inclusion of movement as an important aspect of human perception and experience. After impressionism emerged in the visual arts medium, it led to analogous movements in arts, which will be discussed later in this paper, as well as in other media, such as Impressionism music, Impressionist literature, and Impressionist cinema (“Impressionism”).

Subject matter and techniques of Impressionism

The academic painting was based on certain norms and rules, which early Impressionists broke as they used vivid colors, expressive brush strokes and drew their inspiration from painters such as the French Romantic painter, Eugene Delacroix. The painting had always taken place inside the studio and this rule was not restricted to still life representations and portraits only but landscapes as well, which had always been painted indoors. The Impressionists rejected this norm and took the act of painting out into the world, as they felt they could use the effects of changing sunlight and capture the transient light in their work by painting en Plein air. Their subject matter primarily comprised of realistic scenes of everyday contemporary life and instead of stressing details, they focused on presenting a clear and vibrant overall effect. The color was pure and unmixed, brush strokes were short and broken. The dramatic color was achieved by the unblended nature of the color, as they deviated from the custom of smoothly mixing color to form one uniform shade and consistency (“Impressionism”).

A number of these techniques such as Plein air painting were also being explored by other artists such as Macchiaioli in Italy and Winslow Homer in the United States. But, these techniques are generally attributed to having been developed by Impressionist painters in France, because they developed a specific style and method which was representative of the Movement. The Impressionist Movement was about a different way of seeing, art which was based on immediacy and movement, use of candid poses and open compositions, the play of natural light, and rich and unconventionally used color (“Impressionism”).

Painters of the Impressionist movement used short, thick strokes of paint, and instead of struggling to capture the details of the subject, such strokes enabled them to quickly grasp its bare essence. The application of the paint was often impasto, meaning it was laid on an area of the surface very thickly, enough so that the strokes of the brush or painting knife can be observed. Impasto allows the paint to provide texture when dry as if it’s coming out of the canvas and makes the work more expressive. Another effect which it produces is that it reflects light in a particular way, and Impressionist painters required this control on the play of light on paintings. The use of light was a very critical characteristic of Impressionist work as the reflection of colors from one object to another was paid close attention (“Impressionism”).

Another technique used in impressionist art was that wet was not allowed to dry before successive applications of wet paint on it, which led to a unique, rich combination of color and softer edges of paint. Colors were either not mixed at all, or only minimally as they were applied side-by-side, producing a flamboyant surface. However, to the viewer, the colors would appear to be mixed – such was the effect of this technique. Conventional Impressionist painters avoided using black paint and created dark or monochrome tones by mixing complementary colors (“Impressionism”).

Impressionist paintings were usually based on opaque surfaces, and these painters broke the tradition that earlier artists followed of exploiting the transparency of thin paint films (glazes) to create effects. As mentioned earlier, en Plein air or painting outdoors became particularly important during this time and principal advocates of this technique were Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Mauclair, 1903). Most of their work was done outdoors. Paintings made outdoor end up capturing a certain freshness and openness due to the reflection of shadows painted boldly against the pale blue hues of the sky, which was not possible in earlier paintings. Following the French Impressionists, American Impressionist painters such as Guy Rose, Mary Denil Morgan, John Gamble, and Arthur Hill Gilbert as well as Russian painters such as Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, and Konstantin Korovin became avid painters of en plein air during the second half of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century (“En plein air.”).

These methods had been employed by painters throughout history, but Impressionists used them all together and challenged the customary ways of painting. The very first artists whose works exhibit the use of these techniques are Frans Hals, Diego Velàsquez, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner (Mauclair, 1903).

One thing which worked to the benefit of Impressionists was the introduction of premixed paints in lead tubes, which happened in the middle of the 19^th century. Previously, painters would have to go through the tedious process of making their paints by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil. However, with the introduction of these paints, they were able to work more spontaneously whether outdoors or indoors (“Impressionism”).

Another key concept which characterized Impressionist movements was that the content resulted as similar to a snapshot, probably inspired by the new popularity of photography at that time. The subject and background were not treated as entirely separate parts of the painting, and the effect was as if the painting was a part of a bigger reality captured accidentally. The result was more candid, and moments were captures in the everyday lives of people, not just in the views of a landscape. In their paintings, Impressionists aimed to go a step further than photographers could, by including their perceptions in the paintings rather than producing a mirror image as photography did. “Snapshot” angles and unusual compositions were commonly used in Impressionist paintings (Denvir, 1990).

Impact

Impressionism had a profound impact in shaping modern art which was to follow as instead of recreating the subject, it recreated techniques and forms, changing the way the subject was perceived. It was the driving force behind various movements which followed in painting such as Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism (“Impressionism”).

Neo-Impressionism had its roots in Impressionism but it devised a technique called divisionism in which color was broken down into its basic elements and painting was done in small dots, so that from a distance, the dots formed an optical mix of hues (“Neo-impressionism”). Post-Impressionism was another artistic movement derived from Impressionism that extended its concepts but rejected its limitations. While vivid colors, loose and thick brushstrokes, and real-life subject matter were used in this movement as well, geometric forms were emphasized upon, a form was often altered to convey more meaning, and colors used were unnatural and random. This was a very important movement in France’s artistic history and early Post-Impressionists included Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cezanne (“Post-Impressionism”).

Impressionism also made modern art distinctly ‘modern’ and one of the movements it spawned was Fauvism. This comprised early 20^th-century modern artists who used rich colors in unconventional ways and simple lines, while at the same time made the painting easy to interpret and exaggerated the perspective it offered (“Fauvism”). An example of a painting from this movement is presented below, painted by Henri Matisse, one of the leaders of the movement:

Cubism was another art movement influenced by Impressionism and took place in the 20^th century. It started in 1908 and gained massive popularity in France until it died in 1919 (“Cubism”).

Conclusion

Impressionism art had a distinct style in which artists used vivid colors and painted their subjects just as if a person had caught a glimpse of it. These artists were fascinated with light and used it to give a variety of effects in their paintings. It influenced modern artists and paved the way for several crucial movements in art history.

Bibliography

1. “Cubism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
2. Denvir, Bernard. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of Impressionism. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.
3. “En plein air.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
4. “Fauvism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
5. “Impressionism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
6. Mauclair, Camille. The French Impressionists (1860-1900). Web.
7. “Neo-impressionism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
8. “Post-Impressionism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
9. Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

Impressionists

During the mid 1860’s artists in France became discontent with the style of painting proscribed by the National School Of Art. This school (also called: Ecole des Beaux-Arts) emphasized painting using black outlines and shadows. Artist such as Claud Monet, August Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Jean-Frederic proposed that black outlines and shadows not be used because these details did not exist in nature. This new school of though came to be know as ‘impressionist’ and these artists advocated for the use of colors directly from nature. The colors were to be juxtaposed and were to be mixed optically by the viewer’s eye. An example of Pre-Impressionist art (Rembrandt’s Sacrifice of Isaac) can be found in Annex A. An example of Impressionist art (Edouard Manet) can also be found in Annex A.

Post Impressionists

Post Impressionists did not advocate for change to any one style but moved to include new forms of representation. Post-Impressionists wished to retain the basic values of Impressionism. Artists wanted new subjects and wanted to deepen the meaning of their paintings.

Paul Gaugan was an Impressionist that moved to embrace Post-Impressionism in the 1880’s. His work included flat planes of color and he tried to include subjects in different cultures. Annex A. contains and example of his work called “Woman in the Waves (Ondine), 1889”. It also important to note that Post Impressionist were fascinated with prints, especially Japanese prints.

Expressionists

Expressionism followed in the late 19^th to early 20^th century. Expressionist were opposed to academic standards for their art. Expressionist’s work emphasized the subjective emotion of the painter. Expressionism is very different than the other forms of art. Paintings are often distorted or altered, have violent colors, exaggerated lines, and show intense emotion. Best descriptions of paintings from this era are vivid, jarring, violent, and dynamic. One of the most famous artists of Expressionism is Vincent Van Gogh. His painting, called “the Starry Night”, can be found in Annex A.

Expressionism was most dominant in Germany and artists of this genre used art to express their intense feelings. German painters part of the Die Brucke (The Brook) were from Dresden and Berlin. Emil Nolde’s (German, 1867-1956) can be found in Annex A.

Conclusion

Beginning with the Impressionists artists began to sway from the academic norm taught in art schools in Europe. Artists began to look at painting as more than replication of forms but as a way to express themselves. From Impressionism that loses the dark lines and shadows, through Post-Impressionism where artists begin to use a complete palate of colors, to Expressionism where artists used art to express their innermost feelings, the art of painting has gone through dramatic changes.

Perhaps the vivid and violent nature of paintings from Expressionism told of things to come such as World War I and II. Many Expressionists had lived through World War I and painting was there way of expressing the horrors of war. These painters live through the chaos of Europe and the disintegration of cities, towns, and countries. One can speculate that paintings were meant to send a message that war is a horrible thing that should be avoided at all cost.

References

American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Cleveland Museum Of Art. (2007). Cleveland Ohio. Web.

Expressionism. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Web.

Introduction

Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) is an outstanding French artist who is known for his marvelous works in drawing and sculpture. He is considered to be a representative of the period of Impressionism, but he stuck to the point that his works belonged to the realistic theme. The most important element in his masterpieces was movement; he used to embody the features of movement through dancers and dancing itself. Edgar Degas was famous for his portraits and history paintings reflecting all the historical features of art development.

Biography

The family, in which Edgar Degas was born, belonged to aristocratic society and lived in Paris. When the future painter was only 13 his mother died and the children left with their father. Edgar Degas studied in the famous school in order to receive classical education, and then at the Faculty of Law, though he was interested in painting from the very beginning of his study. He was advised to paint people in 1855 by Jean Auguste Ingres and in 1956 he decided to study painting on the professional level. Edgar Degas spent about three years in Italy and this time was reflected in his works. He was influenced by such famous painters as Michelangelo, Raphael and other representatives of the Renaissance period. During this time the painter managed to learn the most important methods of drawing, to study main peculiarities of classical art and to become familiar with the techniques of academic art.

The artist’s career of painting was merely concentrated on the depiction of the family members, portraits and dancers in movement. He painted the objects of reality and paid much attention to the play of light in his works. Though his works contained some features of Impressionism, the artist refused this fact and never considered himself to be the representative of this art movement. Spontaneity was the main feature that made his works individual and more realistic than those of Impressionists. Degas tried to combine inspiration and feeling of spontaneous vision in his masterpieces. The artist was known for his individual style in which he managed to depict the main features of skilled and famous painters.

The most famous works of the artist are La Classe de Danse, L’Absinthe, Place de la Concorde, Musicians in the Orchestra, At the Races, La Toilette, Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers and many others. The artist used to be interested in photographing and during some period of time he tried to make creative photos of his entire friends and close people. Degas was also famous for his marvelous sculptures such as Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, etc.

Edgar Degas was the author of many great exhibitions and his works were spread all around the world. He is still considered to be the father of the Impressionism movement and the founder of many new techniques of art style. Due to his works one can observe the features of other famous painters who created their masterpieces during the whole history of art development. Edgar Degas rejected any strict rules and methods of painting style and relied only on his spontaneous feeling and first impression from the object that is why all his works are very emotional, involving and living. A lot of painters used his works as the background for their own and tried to follow his individual and unique style of drawing. Edgar Degas left a great print in the world history of art and people have an opportunity to derive an utmost pleasure from his marvelous paintings and sculptures.

References

Canaday, John. The Lives of the Painters, Volume 3. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc, 1969.

Benedek, Nelly S. Chronology of the Artist’s life: Degas. NY, 2004.

Summary

Moving away from escapism, the community sought Enlightenment rationality and searched for truth in various areas – from politics to economics, which led to realism. Positivism, a philosophical course that seeks an objective and empirical approach to human experience, has gained popularity.

The desire for accuracy prompted the development of photography, and in 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre created the Daguerreotype, a technology capable of creating a fixed tonal image.

Other photography techniques included combination prints – combining several negatives to create an image proposed by Oscar Rejlander and William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype – exposing silver chloride to light (Arnason & Mansfield, 2013).

Anna Atkins applied cyanotype – placed objects on photosensitive paper, exposing them to light.

Julia Margaret Cameron became famous for close-ups with blur and photos related to Orientalism.

European colonialism led to the popularity of ethnography and the emergence of Orientalism – the Western representation of the Middle East visually or literary.

Display of war became an important photography direction in the 19th – Matthew Brady is the famous representative of the trend.

An Art Reborn

French artist Auguste Rodin contributed to the revival of the sculpture, combining Symbolism and Realism through the display of physical bodies while revealing thoughts and emotions. His famous works are The Age of Bronze, the Gates of Hell, and Burghers of Calais. He influenced other artists – Camille Claudel and Medardo Rosso, artists, who worked with sculpture and influenced this direction.

The Poetic Science of Color

Georges Seurat became interested in the principles of organizing colors and their influence on each other at different locations, which is reflected in his works. His unusual drawing technique was named Divisionism, Pointillism, and Neo-Impressionism. Moreover, his use of points is also comparable to mosaic.

Paul Signac continued Seurat’s tradition by paying more attention to harmony and the combination of colors. His work reflects the neo-impressionist idea that absolute creative freedom can lead to social change.

Reference

Arnason, H. H., & Mansfield, E. C. (2013). History of modern art. Pearson.

Introduction

Impressionism in art was a popular movement that started in the mid-1800s in France and broke the rules of classical painting in terms of content and style. The main characteristic of impressionist artwork revolved around painting nature, landscapes, and still objects, paying attention to the background and the effect of the light. The present art tour essay covers five works of art, each painted by prominent impressionist artists of the late 19th and early 20th century (Lesson and Ships). The works are Near Sydenham Hill by Camille Pissarro (1871), Idle Hours by William Merritt Chase (circa 1894), In the Greenhouse by Dennis Miller Bunker (1888), Flags on the Waldorf by Childe Hassam (1916), and Le Pont de l’Europe by Gustave Caillebotte (1876) (Lesson and Ships).

Analysis

Idle Hours (1894) is one of the iconic works of William Merritt Chase (1849-1917), one of the most respected and honored artists of his day in the United States. The work represents oil on canvas painting, 25½ x 35½ inches in size, which is located at Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (Baker). The picture depicts four people on the beach resting on a summer day on the beach of Shinnecock. The woman in a red hat is Chase’s wife, which apparently reading a book, and two of his daughters. The woman with a parasol is possible Chase’s sister-in-law. The painting was drawn after Chase moved with his family to their newly built summer home in Shinnecock, in which he opened the Shinnecock Summer School of Art. This painting along with Gathering Autumn Flowers and The Big Bayberry, in which shows the technique of the author in integrating the figure into a landscape, all of which features his daughters (Baker). Featuring landscapes the work is representative of impressionism, although with an American take on it, focusing on the backgrounds, and the use of intermediary colors and shades in showing the effect of light on the scenery.

Near Sydenham Hill (1871) is an artwork by the French impressionist Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) (Southgate and Association 48). The work is oil on canvas painting with the size of 17 x 21 inches, and is located Kim bell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The painting represents a typical for impressionism scenery – a natural landscape of a suburban area near London. The scenery is mainly stationary with the only movement that can be identified is of a train moving in the middle distance. Brown shades prevail in the picture showing an abundance of shadows, indicating early spring, which contrast with the light on the field. The picture was painted at the time when Pissarro lived in London suburb during 1870 and 1871. The artist used was a supporter of a realistic depiction of landscape, where for him “a landscape on canvas must be the exact reproduction of a natural scene… “(Southgate and Association 48). He also used color, rather than lines to converge planes on the horizon, indicating infinity in the picture.

In the Greenhouse (1888) is a work by the American impressionist Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890) (Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Junker and Gillham 118). The work is oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches in size, and located in Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The painting a close-up depiction of chrysanthemums in a green house. The technique used clearly demonstrates the prevalence of spontaneous and unrestrained brush strokes, and vivid colors. Bunker did not paint each flower in detail, rather than making touches of vivid color stand for the entire flower. The depicted chrysanthemums were growing in the greenhouse of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a Boston art patroness. The work was one of two painted after Bunker’s return from Europe, the other being titled Chrysanthemums, also painted in the same location. At the time, the style European exercised by Bunker was a radical departure of the academic training he received in New York and in Paris. Despite being regarded as having a suspiciously radical style, the work In the Greenhouse is considered “one of the most inventive American impressionist paintings” (Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Junker and Gillham 118).

Flags on Waldorf (1916) is an artwork by the American impressionist artist Childe Hassam (1859-1935) (Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Junker and Gillham 176). The work is oil on canvas painting, 36¼ x 30¼ in size, and located in Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The style and the painting in particular are notable for many aspects, one of which is the depiction of urban sceneries, to which Hassam was drawn. The other is the flag theme, in which Flags on Waldorf is one of more than 30 canvases. Similar to other paintings in the series, Hassam used the flag as a constant in a changing scenery, in order to record the changes of the patriotic display of the Firth Avenue during World War I (Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Junker and Gillham 176). Despite the departure of the theme of natural landscapes, the impressionism is still can be identified through the omission of contour details, in favor of brush strokes, the focus on the background, the use of interim colors to show the play of light and shadows, and others. The painting along with the whole collection represents a value in both artistic and historic terms, depicting an important period in the United States (Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Junker and Gillham).

Le pont de l’Europe (The Bridge De l’Europe) (1876) is a work by the French impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) (Küveler). The painting is oil and canvas, 49-1/8 x 71-1/8 inches in size, and located in Petit Palais museum, Geneva (Küveler 9). The painting depicts people on the pedestrian path on the bridge. The picture’s palette can be distinguished with cool tones, and the picture is generally filled with details, unlike the rough brushstrokes of characteristic of impressionists. The use of perspectives in the picture engages the viewer into the picture, with the main them being the juxtaposition of man and technology (Küveler 9).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the diversity of the described work provides an overview of impressionism. The existence of many common elements in all of the works, nevertheless, does show the diversity, and the way each artist attempted to bring something unique, either, in style, technique, or content. This tour might be useful to those interested in impressionism in art.

Works Cited

Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, P.A. Junker, and W. Gillham. An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum, 2001. Print.

Artilim. “Near Sydenham Hill, Looking Towards Lower Norwood”. 2011. Artilim. Web.

Artnet. “William Merritt Chase”. 2011. Artnet.

Baker, D. Frederick. “A Painted Diary: The Landscapes of William Merritt Chase”. 2009. Antiques and Fine art.

Küveler, Jan. “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting the Enigmatic”. 2006. Ein Moderner. Web.

Lesson and Ships. “Impressionism”. n.d. Lesson and Ships.

Museum Syndicate. “The Pont Du Europe”. n.d. Museum Syndicate.

Southgate, M.T., and American Medical Association. The Art of Jama: One Hundred Covers and Essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Mosby. Print.

Web Gallery. “In the Greenhouse”. n.d. Web Gallery. Web.

The artistic movements and their representatives presented the topic for discussion throughout history. Distinguishing peculiar features that make one style different is the scope of research for many specialists. Some art traditions, including impressionism and expressionism, emerged from the freedom of expression, a fundamental human right. Despite certain superficial similarities, the two art styles are opposed in several key elements. The main points of comparison are the history of development, which include artists of the movement, and the central ideas and motivation of the new style. Regardless of the similarities between impressionism and expressionism, they have entirely different backgrounds and core values shared by their representatives.

The history of emergence presents the fundamental differentiation between the two styles. The art school known as impressionism began its development in Paris in the late nineteenth century as a creative response to the rapidly evolving urban environment. The trend also marked a significant divergence from convention in European painting. The researchers claim that classical artists in France severely condemned the impressionists (Dombrowski, 2020). Impression, Soleil levant by Claude Monet is the source of the term impressionism (Kalba, 2017). The impressionist movement was popularized by artists including Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet, and Edgar Degas. In such an approach to painting, an artist tries to portray the sensation of light in a situation in a natural manner.

At the same time background of expressionism has its roots in German history. The concept started to develop in the late 1800s. However, it developed in Germany and other areas of Europe in the first few years of the 20th century. It was established as an artistic reaction to industrialization’s dehumanizing consequences. Instead of depicting objective reality, the artist tries to capture the subjective feelings and reactions that things and events evoke in them (Yang, 2018). The Expressionismes paintings, which Julien-Auguste Hervé displayed in Paris in 1901, are where the title for the style first appeared (Yang, 2018). As a result, such art responds to positivism and other aesthetic movements like naturalism and impressionism.

The core concept of impressionism is based on the idea that it encourages creativity in painting and uses brilliant colors to capture a fleeting moment. The theme is usually exterior, and little attention is paid to details. In contrast, to seamlessly applied blended colors, paint is typically applied in small strokes using primary color (Kalba, 2017). Impressionists depict the scene as if they had only briefly glanced at it, despite the paintings being based on the actual world. In contrast to painting the subject realistically, this style allowed the artists to emphasize the impression of their theme.

Expressionism uses exaggerated dimensions, strange angles, and paintings in bright, intense hues directly focused on the artist’s emotional reaction to the outside world. Fantasy, aggression, fear, loss of sincerity, and spirituality are frequent topics. Vivid, unpredictable tones, agitated or expressive brushstrokes to portray extreme emotions, disconnected spaces, deformed subjects, and the utilization of subjects from industrialized urban life are notable painting features of expressionism (Kalba, 2017). Some researchers saw expressionism as a reaction to impressionism and its intellectual ancestors.

Therefore, the 20th century marked the emergence of the European impressionist and expressionist art movements. Expressionism began in Germany and Austria at the beginning of the 20th century, while Impressionism originated in Paris in the late nineteenth century. They have distinguishable attributes and techniques, such as colors, subjects, and values, even though they initially appear to be similar painting styles because of the theme of opposition to industrialization.

References

Dombrowski, A. (2020). Impressionism and the Standardization of Time: Claude Monet at Gare Saint-Lazare. The Art Bulletin, 102(2), 91-120.

Kalba, L. (2017). Color in the age of impressionism: Commerce, technology, and art. Penn State University Press. Web.

Yang, L. (2018). The world of psychological and symbolic complexity: The expressionist style. The Formation of Chinese Art Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan. Web.

Introduction

It is important to have a brief history of the impressionism or impressionist movement. We recognize that modern painting began with a movement known as impressionism and was founded in Paris, France. The movement was formed as an opposition to the stiff folklore that was stringently favored by the societies like Impressionist Art Movement. In 1863, an artist known as Edouard Manet made public his painting; the painting caused some serious turmoil hence leading to the establishment of the impressionist movement (Porter and Prince, p. 38). Edouard Manet’s painting was rejected by judges who were subjectively guided by contemporary social settings, rather than by the number of art skills put into the painting. The rejected painting was that of a nude woman at a picnic with two dressed men. Coupled with other paintings which were not usual, Edouard Manet’s paintings led to an uproar by several groups of painters who were ranked by the judges as the poorest impressionists in the painting contests

Even though it was Edouard Manet’s paintings that led to the establishment of the movement and the fact that he was proclaimed the founder and leader of the movement, he did not attend the first display organized by the members of the movement and their subsequent exhibitions. The impressionist movement started gaining increasing popularity in 1874 when some artists formed groups started the public show of their paintings just outside the official salon. During the same year, the impressionist groups created the impressionism term; the term came about after the groups started criticizing Louis Leroy, a journalist who was employed by Le Charivari.

The Technique of an Impressionist

The work of painting is not just a mixture of colors and coming up with impressions. It takes skills and dedication to come up with meaningful paintings; the paintings depict some real issues in society. To come up with such a meaningful painting, using different colors to represent different issues, the artists normally use certain techniques. It is these techniques that will express their feelings, perceptions, and interpretation of the world around them. These techniques are acquired through constant practice and take time to perfect and be able to produce paintings.

In doing the paintings, petite and broad strokes of paint are used to swiftly get the real meaning of the theme, before the details of the intended painting. The paint is repeatedly applied to an area on the working surface. To create an effervescent surface, colors are applied alongside with as limited mixing as it may be deemed possible by the artist. Once the colors are used, the eyes of the viewer determine the ocular assimilation of the colors. During the painting process, dark and gray tones are created by combining complementary colors. However, it is important to note that pure impressionism does not involve the utilization of black paint. This made many of the paintings have a glistening brilliance.

Interestingly, during the painting process, wet paints are just placed on wet paints without giving time for the succeeding applications to dry out. The resultant outcomes are the smoother edges and amalgamation of colors. Most, if not all, of the paintings, are done in the evening to get the indistinctive impact of the light that appears in the evening or nightfall. Moreover, the paintings of an impressionist do not utilize the transparency of very thin films of paints otherwise known as glazes; the previous painting artists had carefully developed to create some desirable effects. One of the most important things to bear in mind is the fact the surfaces on which the painting artists do their paintings are opaque.

Natural light is one of the fundamental elements of painting; in the painting process, keen attention is given to color reflections that take place between objects. Paintings that are done outside buildings show shadows that are boldly depicted by the use of blue color of the sky so that it is reflected onto other surfaces so that it gives an impression of freshness

Throughout the history of artistic painting, these techniques have been used, even though the impressionists were the first to utilize all of these techniques together. During the development of the impressionists’ art movement, the impressionists took advantage of the premixed colors which were found in lead tubes. The premixing of colors and putting them in lead tubes started in the mid-century. That was a great breakthrough since it made easy the work of the painters and hence quickened their work; before, the painters mixed their paints personally, and that made them take long before coming up with a complete artistic work. The process of mixing colors involved pounding and mixing parched pigment powder with oil extracted from linseed, and the whole product would be kept in an animal bladder.

The Ingredients and Composition of the Paintings

Just before the advent of the impressionist movement, other painters who had already existed had placed their emphases on common themes, even though the approaches they used in forming the composition of their paintings were based traditionally. The painters positioned their compositions such that the dominant theme of paintings commanded the attention of the viewers. The artists relaxed the borderline between the background of their paintings and the subject so that the effect has got some semblance to a photograph, a component of wider reality that looks as if captured by possibility.

As much as impressionists gained momentum, photography also gained its equal measure of popularity during the same period. However, it is photography that offered a lot of motivations to the impressionists; the photography enabled the artists to capture moments of the scenery and the everyday life situations of the members of the society. Debatably, the establishment of the impressionist movement can be viewed as one of the responses staged by the painting artists to the lately introduced photography.

Photography, both at the time and currently, involves capturing still pictures of objects and natural phenomena. This offered a great challenge to the impressionist painters by breaking for the new grounds for capturing the real world or life situation as it is. Initially, it seemed like the work of photography demoralized the work of paintings since it portrayed impressionists’ paintings as deficient in their ability to reflect real-world situations. The fact is that photography reflected reality and had more details than paintings. Therefore, photography was superior to impressionists’ paintings; this made the impressionists think deeply about their impressions of realities. The effect of this was that the artists became more and more involved in producing works that give more details to portray the real world as it is.

Even though photography proved to be more superior to impressionists painting, the impressionists had and have never struggled to compete with photography. They instead found an area where photography had failed and sort to use that weakness in improving their paintings. Artistic painting has one most important feature that photography does not have. Whereas the paintings express the painters’ conception of nature around them, photography simply produces a mirror image of the objects captured or of the world. The artists, therefore, simply portray what they visualize and present their paintings in terms of their feelings and interpretations of the social setup of the society.

Each impressionist had his or her style of paintings. There are several features of the universe that painters can come up with. Such impressionists can either come up with paintings of people where an impressionist comes up with paintings of people in their everyday life activities; paintings of animals and or paintings of dancing women and men. In most cases, impressionists would want to express what they visualize, rather than the emotions they have within them; this implies that they represent what they see in front of them rather than an ideology.

Post-Impressionist Movement

Following the formation of the impressionist movement was the neo-impressionist movement. The movement was started during the post-impressionism movement in which a new method of using colors was designed. Before, colors were mixed and then applied to the working surface. However, in the neo-impressionist movement, neo-impressionists smeared varied primary colors to their working surfaces or canvas. The neo-impressionists applied the colors in groups of minute dots and let the eyes of the viewer complete the mixing of the colors. The new method of painting was called pointillism; pointillism played an important role in enhancing the radiance of the applied color pigments. The minute dots are applied very close to one another so that at some distance, the dots appear as a whole in the eye of the viewer and blazed with the highest luminosity. This new technique was called Chromoluminarism by a neo-impressionist painter known as Seurat (Feisner, p. 142).

The mixing of colors by the eyes of the viewers was dabbed divisionism by the earliest members of the neo-impressionists movement. According to the color theory, formulated by Eugene Chevreul, colors mixed optically by the viewer’s eyes, seemed to be more powerful and glowing than those that are combined physically. The neo-impressionist techniques were not picked up by many of the painters; however, they managed to influence a good number of painters who used the techniques in their painting work.

The post-impressionist movement, otherwise known as the neo-impressionist movement, was not formal as such; the movement included painters who were opposed to the limitations of impressionism. The work of the members of the impressionist movement lacked certain elements such as emotional, spiritual, symbolic, and structural elements. These are the things that the works of neo-impressionists sort to include in their painting work. It implies that the more the impressionists got involved in painting, the more they realized certain limitations which some of them never despised. Nevertheless, the painters who felt dissatisfied by the limitations rebelled against the movement leading to the establishment of the neo-impressionist movement.

The post-impressionist movement opened up ways for the establishments of other movements within the painting field. The establishment of these movements was necessitated by the need to make improvements in the way paintings were done. Currently, there are lots of changes going on in the painting industry. It is important to recollect that impressionists rely greatly on what they see in front of them rather than ideological perception. Given this, it is relevant to point out that with growing globalization and technological improvement, the focus and scope of impressionist paintings are increasingly widening.

Conclusion

The Impressionist art movement started in France during the rule of Napoleon III. The movement started as a protest by four painters whose works were rejected on moral grounds. The protest was led by Edouard Manet who has been associated with the formation and subsequent development of the impressionist movement. The impressionist painters were initially concerned with what they see in front of them and never relied on ideological perceptions. However, the neo-impressionist movement which is also known as the post-impressionist movement came up. The movement came up as a protest against the weaknesses of the impressionist movement. It argued that the impressionist movement lacked elements such as structure and emotions.

The advent of the neo-impressionist movement also witnessed the emergence of new painting techniques in which colors were applied in terms of dots on a canvas and then left to be mixed by the ocular view of the viewer’s eyes. In this case, the mixing of colors is left to be done by the eyes of the viewer. The neo-impressionist movement opened up the way for the establishment of other movements which sort to improve on the techniques of painting.

Works Cited

1. Feisner, Edith. Color: how to use color in art and design. Singapore, Laurence King Publishing, 2006.
2. Porter, Darwin and Prince, Danforth. Frommer’s Paris 2010: Volume 815 of Frommer’s Color Complete Guides. Hoboken, Frommer’s, 2009.

Introduction

On the one hand, realism and impressionism are not linked with each other, however, it should be emphasized that both influenced the development of arts, and similar features may be found in both art styles. In fact, the key aim of art criticism is to realize the nature of the work and try to understand the author’s motives which originated the concept of the creation. Therefore, the question of the origin of the works of art becomes a question about the nature of art. Two concepts are used to provide explanations about the work of arts, realism, and impressionism, each of them differing from the other in terms of their unique characteristics. The aim of the paper is to realize the link between realism and impressionism and define the influence of these two styles on each other.

Realism

The basics of realism are closely associated with the necessity to render the objects, items, and characters as they look and exist in the real life. The true-to-life manner is the key aspect of this art style; that is why realistic images and characters often lack the charm of something unknown and mysterious. On the other hand, they are true and sincere, which makes them close to the audience.

In fact, realism has an aesthetic and a cognitive dimension, neither of which can be wholly separated one from the other. Aesthetically, realism refers to certain modes and conventions of verbal and visual representation that can occur at any historical time; however, it is connected particularly to the secular and rational forms of knowledge that constitute the tradition of the Enlightenment, stemming from the growth of scientific understanding in the eighteenth century. Underpinning enlightenment thought is an optimistic belief that human beings can adequately reproduce by means of verbal and visual representation.

The origin of realism lies in the unconscious convictions of man and his development in making it a conscious and logically grounded self-consistent theory. What we see with our eyes and touch with our hands is real and exists independently in space and time; this is an instinctive belief of man. Indeed, its formulation and its vindication are the work of reflective thought. However, from instinct to thought, and from an unconscious belief to a well-worked-out theory, there is a long and weary way. Conscious realism is the idea that hovers before it; the struggle consists of realizing this ideal and until this ideal is realized, the process is never complete. These attempts are the beginning of realism. However, the questioning of the validity of the realistic instinct consists of denying the directness of perception and the independent reality of objects – the two main theses of realism.

Ancient philosophy remained in the instinct to the reality and perception of the external world. Primarily, the name Realism was first applied in 1850 to a new style of painting and soon spread to literature. However, realists of the mid-nineteenth century rejected Romanticism as they wanted to deal with ordinary characters from actual life rather than Romantic heroes in exotic settings. They also sought to avoid emotional language by using close observation and prehistoric description, an approach that led them to write novels instead of poems, and portraits of ordinary people instead of noble society. Hence, one of the brightest instances of realism in art is the image by Van Gogh “The Potato Eaters” (1885). This is the image of ordinary people – poor folks, who do not even remind people by their appearance. However, the emphasis is made not on their appearance, but on the impressions of their faces, the emotions which they may experience. Realism became the dominant style in the art after 1850, for instance, realist art demonstrated three major characteristics: a desire to depict the everyday life of ordinary people, whether peasants, workers, or prostitutes; an attempt at photographic accuracy; and an interest in the natural environment (Duiker and Spielvogel, 2009, p. 603).

Towards the end of the 18th century, a new intellectual movement known as Romanticism emerged to challenge the ideas of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment argued that the major means of discovering the truth is through reasoning. Romantics on the other hand disparaged reason but they balanced its use by stressing the importance of feeling, emotion, as well as imagination as sources of knowledge. Enlightenment and Romanticism, in their turn, created the basics for the appearance of impressionism on the map of world arts. It should be emphasized that enlightenment made people more open, sincerer, and free in the expression of their emotions and impressions. Hence, impressionism was the important aspect of Enlightenment and further development of art. (Duiker and Spielvogel, 2009)

Impressionism

Impression in art might be characterized as a precursor to today’s discipline of fuzzy thinking. The impressionist movement took place primarily in France at the end of the 19th century with the primary concern being the effect of light on an object rather than the exact presentation of the form. In addition, the depictions they created tended to be much more vivid than the blending of pigments that were generally in use at the time. However, subtleness, juxtaposition, and shading of primary colors were crucial to achieving the desired effect that is best appreciated from a distance. Part of the wide appeal of Impressionist paintings may be the fact that the human brain tends to perceive objects using what might be called an impressionist filter. Details of an object are often not perceived at first glance in most life’s daily snapshots, while vivid colors are generally considered more cheery than dull ones or dark shades. Indeed, it was the novel use of color that influenced many artists of later generations and movements, as well as establishing Impressionism as a seminal movement in the history of art (Clancy, 2003, p. 1).

Science yielded facts: the information taken to be objectively verifiable and hence true. Science and scientific methodology also provided the backdrop for many of the revolutionary challenges to conventional thinking that arose during the century.

As for the instances of Impressionism, it should be stated that the classification of the impressionistic images is hard to understand, however, the definitive feature of impressionism is closely linked with the matters of emotions and feelings of the creator. Thus, while realism emphasizes the emotions of the objects and people, impressionism is aimed at creating the image of the author’s impression, feelings and emotions. Claude Monet is one of the brightest impressionists of the epoch. Thus, his “The Cliff at Étretat after the Storm” (1885) reveals a great impression of colors, tones, the game of lights and shadows. Partially, these are the impressions of the artist, however, the key aspect of the image is based on the realistic images of the real image using the unrealistic (impressionist) tools.

Realism and Impressionism

Despite the fact that almost exclusively, subject-oriented movements such as surrealism and subject-oriented techniques such as stream of consciousness appeared primarily after impressionism, pre-positions already existed in nineteenth-century idealist thought. For impressionism, although subjectivity may alter an object, that object is also altered by its physical surroundings; thus, subjectivity may influence but cannot single-handedly produce an object. In addition, although impressionism responded to idealist philosophy, its primary target was positivism. Moreover, realism was positivism’s artistic and literary representative (Clancy, 2003).

Whereas realism’s primary emphasis was to represent an object such that everyone experiences the same object, impressionism emphasized that all interaction between consciousness and its objects is, by definition, dependent on the existence of both subject and object. Realism sought the impossibility of representing noumena, while impression sought the possibility of representing phenomena. Therefore, rather than the unmediated representational art and literature realists sought to produce, they in fact present a mediated construct of the object.

Since realists tried to eliminate subjectivity from the epistemological process, impressionism believed its works were actually more realistic – more representational – than traditionally termed representational works. Moreover, realism tried to civilize the interaction between consciousness and its objects, removing individual subjectivity and representing a universal product, while impressionism rendered a primitive and essentially unmediated object (Peters, 2001, p. 21). The earlier works of realism and impressionism influenced further creativity by creating the basic concepts of art. In the light of this statement, it should be emphasized that the principles of realism originated the development of realistic concepts and features, which became interwoven with other styles and branches of art. As for impressionism, this style became the origin of numerous genres in painting and photography, as well as music and cinema.

Conclusion

Realism and impressionism were the basic concepts of arts, which became the essence of the art epoch. The influence of these styles is immense. In spite of the fact that they have similar features and tools for transcribing an image, the meaning of these images is quite different. The link between these art epochs is not evident, however, the influence is important.

References

1. Clancy, J. (2003). Impressionism: historical overview and bibliography. NY, Nova Publishers. Web.
2. Duiker, W. J. and Spielvogel, J. J. (2009). World History. MA. Cengage Learning. Web.
3. Peters, J. G. (2001). Conrad and impressionism. NY, Cambridge University Press. Web.