What is Impressionism and why we should care?
Impressionism is the name of the artistic movement which started in the second half of the 19th century in France among painters and soon expanded in other countries and other artistic areas. The name was coined as a mocking word by art critic and satiric Louis Leroy who used the title Impression, Sunrise (Impression, Soleil Levant) by Monet for it.
This is definitely not the only interesting trivia related to Impressionism, but first, let’s look at the main circumstances that helped the formation of Impressionism:
– During the 19th century, many things changed in the political and economic sphere in Europe and France was no exception; Academie des Beaux-Arts served as a kind of guardian of tradition and preferred traditional art and traditional techniques to new ones. Well, artists are rebels by definition, so a clash between the older, established representatives and younger ones was to be expected. A lot of artists came from lower social classes and there were more and more women among them.
– Group of young painters (Bazille, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and occasionally others, among which Cezanne, Degas, and Manet are most known names today) loved to experiment with brighter and more eye-catching new color pigments. They used them to portray contemporary life and often painted outdoors, where they found a lot of inspiration in uneven light and movement of painted objects.
– The main annual event in France was the exhibition in the so-called Salon (Salon de Paris), where painters commissioned their new works and a special jury awarded (or rejected) them. The group mentioned above was often rejected.
– Things started changing after a rejection of Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass. The reason was a nude among clothed models which was a contemporary scene, not one of historical or mythological scenes which were in favor of the jury. When Emperor Napoleon III saw the painting, he ordered to make an exhibition of rejected art. Although many visitors went to this exhibition only to ridicule the artists, this exhibition achieved greater popularity than the traditional Salon.
– Encouraged by this and with similar problems in the next years, the painters (they were not called Impressionists then) decided to establish their own exhibition in 1874. The already mentioned Leroy used the title of Monet’s painting to deride painters as Impressionists, as being unable to present a clear scene. The Impression was just an impression, a mere sketch, not a finished work, in his opinion.
– The term soon became popular and the same happened to the Impressionists. They used a set of different techniques which were already in use by other artists, but not to such a degree. This includes visual traces of the paintbrush (no go in a classic school), the so-called broken color technique (instead of brown, mixed from red and green, they applied red next to the brow, which caused a much more energetic feeling) when they applied layers of paint, they didn’t wait for each layer to be dried up, they avoided black color and used for instance blue for shadows, or mix of complementary colors to make look of gray, they used much lighter colored ground...
- The effect of impressionism was impressive (pun intended). Art stopped depicting only classical scenes, so an artist was not obligated to have a high degree of education. Art was produced much faster, it became more available to a wide audience and it started to spontaneously celebrate life right here, right now. We can say it was kind of a by-product of the Industrial Revolution.
– Many painting styles were started by Impressionism. Abstract-Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Neo-Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism are only some of them. Although some of the most expensive paintings in the world were made by Impressionists, the majority of Impressionists didn’t earn much with their work in their lifetime. But without a doubt, they changed the art forever.