•French movement with paintings produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques.

•Impressionists attempted to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color.

•Scientific examination of light -

•Key artists included Monet, Renoir, and Cassatt.

•Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne also painted in an Impressionist style for a time in the early 1870s.

•The established painter Edouard Manet, whose work in the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and others of the group, himself adopted the Impressionist approach about 1873.

Impressionism

At that time…•Religion no longer played the dominant role in the arts.•Our modern era emerges about the middle of the eighteenth century with the Industrial Revolution, which introduced the age of the machine - a universe of machines that replace physical labor.•For Europe, the nineteenth century was an age of radical change during which the modern world took shape and a population increase.•The powers of Steam, petroleum, and electricity were harnessed to industrial production, transportation, and communication. •The revolution in industrial materials produced cast-iron buildings; and iron, converted by new methods into steel and its alloys, was the elementary stuff of heavy industry and its products: ships, locomotives, big guns, and bridges.•Chemical photography was invented in 1826 and impacted the view of art.

Positivism•In the visual arts there was the “positivist” spirit, (The French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) used the term positivism during the 1830s to describe what he saw as the final stage in the development of philosophy, in which all knowledge would be derived from science and scientific methods.). •Positivist thinking is apparent not simply in the growth of naturalism but also in the full range of artistic developments of the period after 1850—from the highly descriptive style of academic art, with its “realistic” figures and elements, to the Impressionist emphasis on the phenomenon of light; and from the development of photography to the application of new technologies in architecture. •The positivist faith that technological progress was the key to human progress spawned a long succession of world’s fairs devoted to advances in industry and technology. The first of these fairs, the London Great Exhibition of 1851, introduced new building techniques that ultimately contributed to the temporary abandonment in the twentieth century of use of “historically” based styles-in architecture.

ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863. Oil on canvas, approx. 7’ x 8’ 10”. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 3”. Musée

d’Orsay, Paris.

ÉDOUARD MANET, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882. Oil on canvas.

E.L.B.O.W.• Everyday, Light, Brushstrokes, Outdoors, Weather &

Atmosphere• Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include

relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

• In 1841 - John G. Rand invented the collapsible paint tube. This allowed artists to travel with their paints.

• Impressionists did not use the color black - Renoir said “No Shadow is black, it always has a color. Nature knows only color…white and black are not colors.”

• Used compliments - violet is the opposite of yellow, the color of sunshine.

Impressionism• Understand the formal elements and subject choices of the

Impressionist artists.• Examine the Impressionists’ interest in sensation,

impermanence, and the “fleeting moment” as it was expressed in their art.

• Understand the importance of light and color theory in the work of the Impressionists.

• Recognize representative Impressionist artists and works.

The Beginning of Impressionism

• Examine the Impressionists’ interest in sensation, impermanence, and the “fleeting moment” as it was expressed in their art.

• Understand the importance of light, color theory, and relevant scientific experiments.

Claude Monet

•Claude Monet used bright, sunny colors and broken brushstrokes to achieve a happier mood in his paintings. At the same time, he often depicted industrial scenes, such as The Railroad Bridge thus acknowledging that many new leisure pursuits were made possible by the financial success of the newly industrialized world.

•He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the ideals of the movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is fitting that one of his pictures---Impression: Sunrise (1872)---gave the group his name

CLAUDE MONET, Impression: Sunrise, 1872. Oil on canvas, 1’ 7 1/2” x 2’

1 1/2”. Musée Marmottan, Paris.

•Monet's “Impression” painting was not in itself a work that need be regarded as the essential criterion of Impressionism, vivid sketch though it is. There are many works before and after that represent the aims and achievements of the movement more fully. Yet it has a particular lustre and interest in providing the movement with its name.

•The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

•It was first adopted by the artists themselves for their third group exhibition in 1877, though some disliked the label. It was dropped from two of the subsequent exhibitions as a result of disagreements but otherwise defied suppression.

Monet

Garden at Sainte-Adresse 1867 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 98.1 x 129.9 cm

The Beach at Sainte-Adresse 1867

Claude MonetEarly Work

Monet painted canals, boats, and windmills in Holland and worked again at Le Havre.

Coquelicots (Poppies, Near Argenteuil) 1873;

La Promenade 1875

Monet First Impressionist paintings

Later Impressionism Work

The Boat Studio 1876Woman with a Parasol 1875

Woman with a Parasol, epitomizes the Impressionist concept of "the glance". It triumphs wonderfully in conveying the sensation of a snapshot in time, a stroll on a beautiful sunny day. The brushwork, feathery splashes of pulsating color, is critical in establishing this feeling of spontaneity. Monet's painting in series attains an impressive climax in the series he devoted to the Rouen Cathedral

Saint-Lazare Station 1877

Rouen Cathedral: 1894;

Monet - In Paris and Studies of Light

CLAUDE MONET, Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (in Sun), 1894. Oil on

canvas, 3’ 3 1/4” x 2’ 1 7/8”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New

York (Theodore M. Davis Collection, bequest of Theodore M. Davis,

1915).

Monet - His water-garden and water-lilies at Giverny

•In a clear response to what is now called the crisis of Impressionism, Pierre Auguste Renoir rejected the impermanence of Impressionism in favor of an approach that could compete with the enduring quality of the classical past. •Renoir was influenced, during his first years, by the Barbizon School, as well as Gustave Courbet. However in common with his contemporaries, Renoir was disenchanted with the formal tuition of the studios, and the forest of Fontainbleau, was a working ground for him.•His early paintings were not appreciated either by the critics nor the public. However this was common for all the impressionist artists, and it was not before a decade after the start of their movement, that their revolutionary approach had become accepted. •Renoir’s artistic progress was interrupted during the Franco-Prussian War, but soon after the fighting stopped, he took up painting again, and for the next ten years he was very much associated with the Impressionists, where rich colour, delicate brush stokes, and light palette created a highly individual style.

Pierre Auguste Renoir

•Instead of attempting to capture a fleeting instant, Renoir created a more stable composition in Luncheon of the Boating Party

Renoir

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Oil on

canvas, approx. 4’ 3” x 5’ 8”. Louvre, Paris.

•Renoir was much more concerned with human form rather than nature and landscape, which was Monet’s favourite subject. He loved to show the bustling life of Paris.

The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette 1876

A Girl with a Watering Can

The Swing 1876On the Terrace 1881

•Renoir had 'travelled “as far as Impressionism could take me”, and a visit to Italy in 1881-82 inspired him to seek a greater sense of solidarity in his work

•The change in attitude is seen in The Umbrellas (NG, London), which was evidently begun before the visit to Italy and finished afterwards; the two little girls on the right are painted with the feathery brush-strokes characteristic of his Impressionist manner, but the figures on the left are done in a crisper and drier style, with duller coloring.

•After a period of experimentation with what he called his `manière aigre' (harsh or sour manner) in the mid 1880s, he developed a softer and more supple kind of handling. At the same time he turned from contemporary themes to more timeless subjects, particularly nudes, but also pictures of young girls in unspecific settings. As his style became grander and simpler he also took up mythological subjects

Renoir

La famille de l'artiste 1896

The Umbrellas

Mary Cassatt•Mary Cassatt, too, favored more classical subects and firmer handling of form in her later work such as Maternal Caress•Cassatt's life was marked by her bold resolve to transcend conventional expectations for women and to succeed as an innovative professional artist. •After her education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia, she continued her studies in Europe and settled permanently in Paris in 1874. •Her early paintings, which she displayed at the important annual Salon exhibitions, incorporate fashionable Spanish and Italian themes. But Cassatt embraced more radical art in the mid-1870s, when she discovered the works of the Impressionists, turned toward subjects drawn from modern life, and (as she later recalled) "began to live." •Cassatt was soon invited by Edgar Degas to join the Impressionist circle. Over the next twenty-five years, she created brilliant pastels, paintings, and prints that depict contemporary women attending the opera, drinking tea, reading, and caring for children.

MARY CASSATT, The Bath, ca. 1892. Oil on canvas, 3’ 3” x 2’ 2”.

The Art Institute of Chicago,

Chicago (Robert A. Walker Fund).

Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter1872-73, Oil on canvas was accepted by the jury at the Salon, the official annual exhibition in Paris.

Cassatt exhibited this painting in Boston in 1878; in 1910 it became one of the first of her works to enter the collection of an American museum.

In theLoge 1877-78

Cassatt

Cassatt exhibited this work in the Impressionist exhibition of 1880, one French reviewer wrote "I also very much like the woman reading on a balcony, where shrubs frame her blonde head with peonies-much like Japanese art, with its absence of deep space and the happy mix of colors in an entirely cheerful scale . . . every one of Mlle. Cassatt's fifteen entries merits consideration for some felicity of movement or harmony."

On a Balcony1878-79

Portrait of a Little Girl 1878,

Refusal of this work in a show solidified her place in the Impressionist Movement

•In 1893, Cassatt was asked to paint a monumental decoration for the world's fair in Chicago. The mural, called Modern Woman, established her reputation in the United States. •Its title reminds us that, in her own day Cassatt was both a modern artist and a modern woman. This exhibition offers new insights about her world and her art. •Modern Woman, for the Woman's Building at the world's fair in Chicago was lost, but a number of its motifs survive in pastels, color prints, and paintings. In this image, Cassatt combined an element from the mural's border, decorated with plump babies, with the primary theme of the central panel, women plucking the fruits of knowledge

Edgar Degas •was a French painter and sculptor whose innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of modern art in the late 19th century.

•Degas is usually classed with the impressionists, and he exhibited with them in seven of the eight impressionist exhibitions. However, his training in classical drafting and his dislike of painting directly from nature produced a style that represented a related alternative to impressionism.

•After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them.

•He was attracted by theatrical subjects, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs.

•Degas was a keen observer of humanity—particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied—and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.

Dancer in the Changing Room

EDGAR DEGAS, Ballet Rehearsal, 1874. Oil on canvas, 1’ 11” x 2’ 9”.

Glasgow Museum, Glasgow (The Burrell Collection).

Edgar Degas

•His study of Japanese prints led him to experiment with unusual visual angles and asymmetrical compositions.

•His subjects often appear cropped at the edges, as in Ballet Rehearsal

•In Woman with Chrysanthemums the female subject of the picture is pushed into a corner of the canvas by the large central bouquet of flowers.

•In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in two new media that did not require intense visual acuity: sculpture and pastel.

Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen Grande Arabesque, Third Time

Horse Galloping on Right FootSpanish Dance

Degas•In his sculpture, he attempted to catch the action of the moment, and his ballet dancers and female nudes are depicted in poses that make no attempt to conceal their subjects' physical exertions.

•Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. was the only sculpture Degas exhibited in his lifetime , it was included in the sixth exhibition of Impressionist art in Paris in 1881.

Degas•His pastels are usually simple compositions containing only a few figures.

•He was obliged to depend on vibrant colors and meaningful gestures rather than on precise lines and careful detailing, these works are eloquent and expressive and have a simple grandeur unsurpassed by any of his other works.

•Degas was not well known to the public, and his true artistic stature did not become evident until after his death.

•He died in Paris on September 27, 1917.

The TubThe Prima Ballerina

Mlle La La at the Circus FernandoRace Horses.

EDGAR DEGAS, The Tub, 1886. Pastel, 1’ 11 1/2” x 2’ 8 3/8”. Musée

d’Orsay, Paris.

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE, Paris: A Rainy Day, 1877. Oil on canvas,

approx. 6’ 9” x 9’ 9”. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Worcester Fund.

CAMILLE PISSARRO, La Place du Théâtre Français, 1898. Oil on canvas, 2’ 4 1/2” x 3’ 1/2”. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (the

Mr. and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva Collection).

HIPPOLYTE JOUVIN, The Pont Neuf, Paris, ca. 1860–1865. Albumen

stereograph.

BERTHE MORISOT, Villa at the Seaside, 1874. Oil on canvas, approx. 1’ 7

3/4” x 2’ 1/8".

Japonisme and Later Impressionism

• Examine issues of other Impressionist, such as the influence of the Japanese print and concerns with formal elements.