It’s easy nowadays to dismiss Impressionism as flouncy, flowery & full of women enveloped in voluminous frocks & florals. & sometimes it is that, the stuff of chocolate box lids & art gallery shop headscarf designs. A bit wet.
But the Impressionists transformed the art world. All history has a trajectory & art history is no different; France could pull off all sorts of revolution. Of course there are the Big Hitters of Impressionism like Claude Monet (Rouen Cathedral, Full Sunlight, 1894 pictured) but as ever, there were precursors, dabblers, experimenters & trailblazers…then there is everything else thereafter. They were kicking against the establishment norms, the tried & tested practices of classical & French scholarly painting; they painted realistically as well as capturing more transient moments, all the while developing ideas about the use of colour to recreate different effects. The public & the critics were unreceptive at first, even responding violently at times.
Even the name “Impressionism” was intended as a slur after a critic reviewed Monet’s 1872 painting Impression, Soleil Levant (my favourite element of this work is the red sun which looks as if he’s painted it with his finger…)
To create such effects in paint not only required a sea change in overall style & colour theories but in methods & techniques. The varying effects of light feature widely in many works & the hand of the artist is clear to see through visible brush strokes that are often small & feathery. This was perhaps the aspect of Impressionist painting most difficult to accept for the standard bearers of the time. “Proper” painting was carefully blended & made to look as if there had been no human hand at work. Lines were clear & precise. Then there was the question of subject matter. Even in the mid-1800s, landscapes, still life, painting outdoors to capture the effects of the passage of time & depicting a sense of movement were not considered suitable.
But like it or not, the art world rarely stays still for long & soon Impressionism was breaking down barriers & preparing to blow our minds…
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), England
Snow Storm: Steam Boat Off a Harbour’s Mouth (c. 1842)
As I say, there were precursors & perhaps the finest of the 19th Century influencers on Impressionism was Turner. Snow Storm can truly be regarded as “impressionistic” – there is very little in the way of literal visual depiction or even line. Were the boat not sketched out, it would verge on abstraction. For this incredible feat of recording a moment & describing what it was like in paint, Turner claimed to have been tied to the boat for four hours in order to “show what such a scene was like.” Spoilsports have questioned this story, as spoilsports are apt to do. In any case & however he achieved it, seeing something like this painting for the first time must have made a phenomenal impact on painters of the day, at least the ones willing & able to rebel against accepted academic traditions. Of course critics (more spoilsports) hated it. A good sign.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), France
La Grenouillère (1869)
Generally, Renoir is probably one of the artists I think of when thinking of the weedier side of Impressionism, but as sniffy as I might be (so many COLOURS!) there’s no doubt he had a distinctive style & made the movement more palatable to many. His work is like the shop front, setting out everything on offer: discernible brush strokes, the varying appearance of light, fleeting changes such as movement, the portrayal of atmosphere, the outdoors & this painting easily ticks all the boxes.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), France
Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877)
Then there were the ones that aren’t considered Impressionists at all. Caillebotte was friends with the Impressionists, but his painting shows more emphasis on clear line work. His study for this work is much more Impressionistic in style & I include it as it’s just interesting to compare the two. Also it’s what early critics of the movement disliked: the unfinished appearance of the paintings, as if they were only a preliminary sketch.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), France
Le Berceau (The Cradle) (1872)
Impressionism: not confined to men, you’ll be pleased to note. This beautiful painting, although touching is free from sentimentality. A lot could be read into the woman’s gaze & the placement of her hands. At first it looks like a protective, motherly demeanour, but it could also be read as cold & distant. Morisot renders the see-through fabrics expertly, allowing the viewer to see the sleeping baby but leaves the lines vague & soft.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), France
Visit to a Museum (1880)
Perhaps best-known for his theatre & ballet scenes, Degas has here depicted what he apparently described as the “absence of sensation that women experience in front of paintings.” I can report that I rarely experience much in the way of sensation in front of Degas’s paintings, so maybe he was on to something.
Eva Gonzalèz (1849-1883), France
Portrait of Jeanne Gonzalès in Profile (c. 1883)
In general it was difficult for women even in the 19th Century to be taken seriously as professional artists, but luckily for Gonzalèz & for future generations, she was able to afford the best of tutors in Édouard Manet. She frequently used pastels to stunning effect. Her sister was also an artist & a frequent sitter for Eva. This wonderful work is notable for the unusual pose & I love the way her plaits taper off into soft focus.
Camille Pissaro (1830-1903), Denmark-France
Self Portrait (1903)
Pissaro tended towards landscapes, cityscapes & works verging on genre paintings, of ordinary people doing ordinary things. This incredible self portrait stands out for me from his other works because of its limited palette & the subject’s mournful gaze.
Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927), France
La Place Valhubert (1875)
Friends with Vincent van Gogh, whose brother sold some of Guillaumin’s pieces, much of his works display high - yet believable – colour. If you’ve ever attended art classes, you might have been told to include all the colours you can see. In La Place Valhubert the artist seems to have done just that.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), USA
Young Woman in a Black & Green Bonnet Looking Down (c. 1890)
Another friend of the Impressionists, Cassatt uses pastels to great effect in this work. She showcases everything pastels can do that other media cannot (at least not easily), using smudging, hatching & bolder lines to contribute to a unified & realistic overall composition.
Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870), France
Studio on Rue Furstenberg (1865)
This painting depicts the studio Bazille shared with Monet. The objects scattered around, whilst interesting & perhaps giving us an insight into their – incredibly tidy - working lives, take second place to the brilliantly suggested light. In a studio, light is all-important & Bazille makes a wonderful job of showing it through use of colour. Pleasingly, the building housing this studio still exists & better yet is now a museum dedicated to artists of the time.
Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), England-France
Fog, Voisins (1874)
For me, this is Impressionism at its most effective. You can feel the cold, the damp, the emptying of colour & the disorientation heavy fog brings. In its way, absolutely dazzling.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), France
The Artist’s Father Reading L’Événement (1866)
A post-Impressionist painter, Cézanne took Impressionism further, indeed brought the art world closer to what would become Cubism. His influence reaches far into the modern part of the art history trajectory. Even in his subject matter (bathers, harlequins) later on we see a direct line to the work of Picasso. Many of his best-known works are still life paintings & in these we see the tight economy of composition that characterised the works of later great painters such as the Scottish Colourists.
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