Impressionism

Early 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 artist's 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 EugÐ"Ёne 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 MOVEMENT

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 EugÐ"Ёne 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.

EugÐ"Ёne Boudin, Stanislas LÐ"©pine and the Dutch Jongkind were among the forerunners of the movement. In 1858, EugÐ"Ёne 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 CÐ"Ò'te de GrÐ"Ñžce, in the Saint-SimÐ"©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 OrfÐ"Ёvres in the Swiss Academy; the eldest, from the Danish West Indies, was Camille Pissarro; the other two were Paul CÐ"©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 Dealcroix's paintings, he changed his style of colour from Ingres' Classicism style to Delacriox's 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