Impressionism

Revision

Origins• Capitalist growth and industrialisation

provoked an unprecedented change that affected Europe radically.

• The continuous changes affected Art : – communications are faster,– photography makes possible to see things that

the human eye could not appreciate.

• During the 19th century artists were known in the Salons or Exhibitions

• In 1863 the Refuses´ Salon was organised.

Inspiration sources

• It is an evolution of the French landscape school of the late 19th century.

• Answer to the new society and philosophy.• Bourgeoisie has its own traditions and its way of

entertaining and this is going to be one of the subjects of the Impressionism.

• Cities are the place where lazy pedestrians walk around, even during the night, with its traditional population such as cabaret singers, dancers, cafes.

History

• They gathered together around the figure of Manet, refused in the official salons.

• In front of the new language they defended the free brushstroke, separated into primary colours that must be mix in the eye.

• People reacted against this art • They counted with the backing of :

– art critics – marchands.

Influences

• The style has a precedent in– the landscapes of the Barbizon School and – the last French realism of Corot and Millet.

• Other influences– colour and composition of the Spanish

Golden Century.– Japanese stamps in fashion at the time,

added a new vision of the space and the use of flat colours

– photography was also influential.

Technique

• They use oil on canvas, even when sometimes they can use pastel on paper.

• New subjects: they recover non important subjects, with an especial interest in landscape, both rural and urban; they want to capsize the fugacity.

• There are real landscapes, independently attractive or ugly.

Technique• There are also non important things, as free

time, dances, and pubs. • They renounce to important subject, with

message.• New valuation of colour.• The only real thing for the impressionist

artist is the relation air-light. • In this way the light is the real subject of

the painting and this is why they repeat it during different hours or seasons.

Technique

• The quality and amount of light is what offers one or another configuration of the object.

• They painted at open air and they used a fast way of painting to catch the changing effects.

• Paintings are luminous and light.

Technique

• Colour is directly related to light. • They use light colours, lively and pure that

they apply directly on the canvas, one on the other, so the mix is made in the spectator’s eye.

• With this resource they gain in chromatic vivacity. Shades are not dark any longer and are reduced to spaces coloured with complementary colours, because in this way the main colour is intensified.

Technique• Free, short and fast brushstroke. It is a need for

catching better the atmospheric effects. • They do not like to modify the things and they

prefer to use big and matter-abundant stains.• Line disappears and the brushstrokes and

colour are the dominant values.-The traditional model with graduating colours and light does not exist.

• As the time goes on the shapes will be dissolved into luminous and chromatic impacts.

Technique

• Open air painting. • New valuation of the illusionist space. • They are not interested on deepness and the

traditional conception of the painting as a window disappears.

• They want it to be alive, a piece of nature, so they escape from perspective and traditional composition.

• Location of the elements, cutting characters and objects, is a photographic effect.

Artists• Manet

– Herenounced to the academic tradition. – He presented in the Refuges Salon Dejeneur sur

l´herbre, offering a vision of the light and composition his contemporaries were not prepared to see.

– The sensation of volume is not given with the chiaroscuro and the images are not located in a certain atmosphere but mixed with it.

– Other works are Olimpia and The Bar of the Folies Bergere.

Artists

• Monet – He is the most poetic of the impressionist,

with a fluid conception of nature. – One of his first objectives is the immediate

visual sensation. – He chose aquatic elements, underlining the

effects of light on the water. – He was worried about light variations

depending on the time, what led him to paint the same image at different hours: Rouen Cathedral.

Artists

• Renoir – He was a revolutionary and an artist of

strong tradition. – He used strong tonalities, red, and yellow

and capsized the wavy movement of light on leaves and water.

– He preferred human motives, mainly women, to express beauty.

– Work: The Moulin de la Galette.

Artists

• Degas – He was more an impressionist of the form than

of the colour. – In many of his paintings the light is substituted

but that of candles. – The tender clothes of the dances capsized the

fugacity of the light.– He considered that form has a value in itself

and keeps its volume. – He represented human images, mainly

Dancers.

Artists

• Seurat – He tried to represent reality with a rigorous

and scientific technique. – He began the divisionism or pointillism. – He represented the luminous vibration with

the application of small dots that compose the unity of the image once perceived by the eye.

– This is the procedure used in his Dimanche Afternoon a la Grande Jatte.

Artists

• Signac – He was influenced by the divisionism – He studied carefully the effects of light

achieving a great colour. – He painted mainly landscapes.

• Other artists:– Pissarro: He painted landscapes or urban

views– Sisley: He painted landscapes, specially

those with effects of water such as floods