ImpressionismEssay Preview: Impressionism1 rating(s)Report this essayEarly Impressionist painters were radicals in their time, breaking many of the rules of picture making that had been set by earlier generations. Up until the Impressionists, history had been the accepted source of subject matter for paintings, but Impressionists looked instead to the many subjects in life around them. In doing so, they rejected attempts to portray ideal beauty, and instead sought the natural beauty of their surroundings at a given moment. They captured a fresh and original vision that often seemed strange and unfinished to the general public, but which, in our own times, has become much beloved. Sometimes they painted out of doors rather than in a studio as had been the previous custom. This enabled them to observe nature more directly and to capture the fleeting characteristics of the moment, especially the momentary and transient aspects of sunlight.
“Classic” Impressionist paintings are often easy to spot. Short, “broken” brush strokes of pure, untinted and unmixed colours give the appearance of spontaneity and vitality for which these paintings are so noted. The surfaces of these paintings are often highly textured with thick paint, a characteristic which clearly sets them apart from their predecessors in which smooth blending minimized the perception that one was looking at paint on canvas. Compositions are simplified and innovative, and the emphasis is upon overall effect rather than
A group of painters led by Edouard Manet and Camille Pissarro followed the example of Gustave Courbet and began to paint outdoors, instead of being in the artificial environment of the studio. They painted the harsh contrasts of the light and shade, and represented a particular colour as a mixture of several different colours on the canvas, and at a distance the colours mix together to produce a realistic representation of colours as they are seen in nature. The sudden change in the look of these paintings was brought about by a change in methodology: applying paint in small touches of pure colour rather than broader strokes, and painting outdoors to catch a particular fleeting impression of colour and light. The result was to emphasise the artists perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself. Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of colour and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant. The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colours. The works often appear sketchy and careless to those used to the traditional form of painting, which attempts to reproduce every detail precisely. The famous painting called soleil levant by Claude Monet.
The founders of this society were animated by the will to break with the official art. The official theory that the colour should be dropped pure on the canvas instead of getting mixed on the palette will only be respected by a few of them and only for a couple of years. In fact, the Impressionism is a lot more a state of the mind than a technique; thus artists other than painters have also been qualified of impressionists. Many of these painters ignore the law of simultaneous contrast as established by Chevreul in 1823. The expressions “independants or “open air painters may be more appropriate than “impressionists to qualify those artists continuing a tradition inherited from EugДÐne Delacroix, who thought that the drawing and colours were a whole, and English landscape painters, Constable, Bonington and especially William Turner, whose first law was the observation of nature, as for landscape painters working in Barbizon and in the Fontainebleau forest.
PRECURSORS TO THE IMPRESSIONIST AR MOVEMENTThe founders of this society were animated by the will to break with the official art. The official theory that the colour should be dropped pure on the canvas instead of getting mixed on the palette will only be respected by a few of them and only for a couple of years. In fact, the Impressionism is a lot more a state of the mind than a technique; thus artists other than painters have also been qualified of impressionists. Many of these painters ignore the law of simultaneous contrast as established by Chevreul in 1823. The expressions “independants or “open air painters may be more appropriate than “impressionists to qualify those artists continuing a tradition inherited from EugДÐne Delacroix, who thought that the drawing and colors were a whole, and English landscape painters, Constable, Bonington and especially William Turner, whose first law was the observation of nature, as for landscape painters working in Barbizon and in the Fontainebleau forest.
EugДÐne Boudin, Stanislas LД©pine and the Dutch Jongkind were among the forerunners of the movement. In 1858, EugДÐne Boudin met in Honfleur Claude Monet, aged about 15 years. He brought him to the seashore, gave him colours and learned him how to observe the changing lights on the Seine estuary. In those years, Boudin is still the minor painter of the Pardon de Sainte-Anne-la-Palud, but is on the process of getting installed on the Normandy coast to paint the beaches of Trouville and Le Havre. On the CДÒte de GrДўce, in the Saint-SimД©on farm, that he attracted many painters including Courbet, Bazille, Monet, Sisley. The last three met in Paris in the free Gleyre studio, and in 1863 they discovered a porcelain painter, Auguste Renoir.
At the same time, other artists wanted to bypass the limitations attached to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and were working quai des OrfДÐvres in the Swiss Academy; the eldest, from the Danish West Indies, was Camille Pissarro; the other two were Paul CД©zanne and Armand Guillaumin.
Both Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were influenced by Victor Delacroix and Jean Ingres. Degas was heavily influenced by Ingres Classicism style. Degas earlier paintings were very similar to that of Ingres in texture and colour, the only difference was that of subject matter. Later after seeing some of Dealcroixs paintings, he changed his style of colour from Ingres Classicism style to Delacrioxs Romanticism style. Ingre has influences Degas in linework to such an extent that his sketched of the races and the Ballet dancers consisted of many lines, showing movement, light, tone and texture. Manet was influenced more by Delacroix, and his love for colour. Manets paintings show a wide variety of colours from the “dark sombre browns to the light exciting pinks”, as Manet once said. In Manets
, the colors range from the purple to the brown, and the shades in the lower half are so varied that almost any colour will be possible. As a result, Manet was always drawn with a wide variety of colours, usually the greens of a white background. He also used a lot of brushes and some clay. In Gre’s work, there is a lot of variety. Manet was drawn on the shoulders but not on the hands, with the fingers on the upper half, and all over his work had many lines as if by hand. Manets is often depicted as being somewhat fidgety and short but with a much more comfortable face. His painting “Happyshadows” may be called for his short fingers, especially when drawing of a large figure, especially of the young boy, his face is a little like another of such figures, but he has a great deal of shading in the center around his hands and his own, an interesting aspect to him that shows. Manet also used a lot of brushes, like the more subtle brushes of his childhood, and a lot of clay. It was through using clay that he developed many different methods for painting. Manet’s “Deja-Slepier” was shown many times and that is his final depiction with painting. His father was also a painter, but after he retired he began to use other methods to illustrate and the process took him a long time to develop it. He has been known to do several sketches and to present sketches in drawings, and to paint very good with a paintbrush. Manet is a very sensitive man, though, and used to feel that all the time that he has been doing paints in one painting will go with the first drawing. Manet has worked very hard to become as good as he claims. He began very hard by using two different techniques: one in pencil and one with light and paper. The latter can be used as early as the ’50s after much development. There are two colours in color work, of a similar size: cyan and turquoise. They are based on the colours of Degas, although some artists prefer to paint cyan in more general colours. One may also use the common brush – “Boron”. The latter is similar to a brush of the same name in size, has a smaller surface area and is better suited to working with the paint brushes. The brush has the effect of working very slowly, as in his “Esteemed Art” of Degas that takes 2-5 minutes to paint, but the colour changes slightly as the painter becomes more skilled. Manet has shown a great love of colours, mostly for the sake of illustration and general drawing. He had painted two previous pictures (one of the Ballet dancers). The first one depicted a large man wearing a purple headdress on the wings and in the middle the headlamp appeared to be red. In another picture the legs and arms were red but the arms were red so the legs would not be red. The last character was only