Impressionism is a movement pictorial French born of the combination of a few artists in the second half of the ^nineteenth century. Heavily criticized in its infancy, this movement manifested itself in particular 1874 to 1886 by eight public exhibitions in Paris , and marked the failure of modern art with the academic. Impressionism is particularly characterized by a tendency to record the fleeting impressions, the mobility of phenomena, rather than stable and conceptual aspect of things, and to refer directly to the canvas. Impressionism was a great influence on the art of this period, painting course, but also literature and music. ^History

Until the early ^nineteenth century , pictorial art official France is dominated by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture , which sets, since its creation under the reign of Louis XIV , the rules of good taste, as well themes for paintings than for the techniques employed. The Academy focuses on teaching the design , easier to define in a well structured body of doctrine for which the copying models of the sculpture antique is an ideal of beauty. The color , regarded since Aristotle as an accident of light , much less lend itself well to structured teaching. So she was not at the time, taught within the Academy itself, but in workshops outside it.

But the ^eighteenth century had marked a significant evolution. The color was already in vogue even at the Academy, Francois Boucher is one example, having been a member of this academy. In the works of Antoine Watteau also academician, critics warned they see signs of Impressionism. Although the early ^nineteenth century saw the return of neo-classicism , a wind of freedom blew on painting in the choice of themes or how to deal with the design example Johann Heinrich Fuseli or George Romney. In the early nineteenth ^century,William Blake and Francisco de Goya and even Eugene Delacroix had already laid the foundations for a new way of painting.

The invention of photography in 1827 overthrew the painting and the painter's craft, which was first to create an image resembling reality. He had to invent a new world view and things to represent.

With the invention of the flexible tube of paint by the industry from the mid-nineteenth ^century, young Parisian painters out of the workshops. Particularly influenced by the realism of the works of Gustave Courbet , these artists emphasize bright colors, the play of light and are more interested in landscapes or scenes from everyday life by the great battles of the past or the stages of the Bible. Welded by critics sometimes very violent suffered by their works, as well as the refusals by the Paris Salon , major institution of painting at the time, these young artists are starting to come together to paint and talk. Among these pioneers, there are notably Claude Monet , Pierre Auguste Renoir , Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille , soon joined by Camille Pissarro , Paul Czanne and Armand Guillaumin.

In 1863 , the rejection by the Salon jury's Luncheon on the grass of Manet on the pretext that it represents a naked woman in a contemporary context (the female nudes are legion in the painting of the time) sets fire to powders. Manet joined the group of Impressionists who require that their works can be presented to the public. The Emperor Napoleon III orders the holding of a Salon des Refuses presents the works have been presented at the Paris Salon. Critics are very violent, much of the public moving even just to make fun of the works exhibited. However, visitors are more likely Refused this year than the actual show.

Before the successive refusals in 1867 and 1872 , to organize another Salon des Refuses, a group of artists including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne, Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas decided to form the limited company of painters , sculptors and engravers in April 1874 to organize their own exhibition in the studio of photographer Nadar. Presents the works of thirty-nine artists, including the precursor Eugene Boudin , whose example convinced Monet to try to paint "the ground" in the open air, the exhibition is the first of eight scheduled between 1874 and 1886.

Once again, the group wipes criticism very violent, that does not reach the eviction of artists. Thus, a section of critical and sarcastic humorist Louis Leroy in Le Charivari magazine in which he derides the Monet painting called Impression: Sunrise , gives the movement its name: impressionism. The term was soon picked up by the public and the artists themselves, although they believe to be reconciled by their revolutionary spirit rather than by the reality of their art.

For this reason, many disagreements exist within the group. Thus, Degas continued to assert dominance over the drawing color, and refuses to paint outdoors. There would be however to qualify this legend of a Degas painting disliking outdoor: in a letter to Valernes, he writes: "Ah! if I had more time to paint from nature! "Vollard said that Degas replied, while he noted that Renoir was painting outdoors:" Renoir, this is not the same thing and can do whatever he wants. Her niece, Jane Smith, said that Degas had a prodigious visual memory and could paint shop of the landscapes he had under his eyes a few days ago. Renoir left the movement in the 1880s , before joining him again, never fully regain the confidence of its members. Edouard Manet himself, who was one of the founders of the group, refuses to exhibit his works with other impressionists, preferring to continue to urge the Paris Salon.

His example is followed: already diminished by the death of Frederic Bazille during the war against Germany in 1870 , the group is marked by the defections of Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley and Monet, the Impressionist exhibitions leaving for the show. Undermined by disputes about the membership, the group of Impressionists eventually disbanding in 1886 when Signac and Seurat mounted a concurrent exhibition. Pissarro was the only artist will present the eight Impressionist exhibitions.

Despite these disagreements, the Impressionist artists are gradually gaining favor with the public and their peers, especially with the help of art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel , who is exposed to London and New York. But this success does not benefit everyone: if Renoir eventually reach a relative financial security in 1879 , followed by Monet in the early 1880's and Pissarro in the 1890s , Sisley died in 1899 in poverty.

Method

Impressionist painters, who also want realistic , are choosing their subjects or landscapes in contemporary life, in a newspaper freely interpreted by the personal vision of each. Working " on the ground "as often painters of the Barbizon school , like some English landscape, as Boudin and Jongkind , they push too far the study of the outdoors, make the light and changing the essential element of their painting, removing dark shades to use pure colors that flicker is a key very divided. Painters of a changing nature, a happy life captured in the particularity of the moment, they are indifferent to research, dear to the classical ideal of a beautiful and eternal essence of things. Among the leading exponents of Impressionism must include Monet , Pissarro and Sisley movements accompanied by other artists whose respective personalities evolve markedly distinct: Auguste Renoir , Paul Cezanne , Edgar Degas , Berthe Morisot , Armand Guillaumin , Edouard Manet , Cassatt , Caillebotte , etc.. and Frederic Bazille , who died before the public recognition.

While Camille Corot claimed remain foreign to the movement, it is often considered the first Impressionist: "There is one master, Corot. We are nothing in comparison, nothing, "Claude Monet, 1897. "There is always the greatest, he anticipated everything ..." Edgar Degas , 1883.

Impressionism is a starting point for Georges Seurat and Paul Signac , master of pointillism , to Paul Gauguin , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Vincent Van Gogh as well as many "post-impressionist" in France (including L. Boiseaubert which painted the "Port of Le Havre in the Fog" in 1887) and abroad as Jean Pesk.

The term Impressionism is also used by extension in the field of literature, for example to characterize the novels of the singer Monet, Octave Mirbeau , which bear the stamp of subjectivity. He won the same music criticism ( 1887 ), describing the works of Claude Debussy and, more generally, those of all the composers concerned about the subjective perception of tonal colors and rhythms: Ravel , Dukas , Satie , Roussel , etc.. Musicians Impressionists began to honor freedom of form of the sentence and the harmonic language.

Impressionism is characterized by the fact that one can speak of the work without needing external references, unlike the ancient art that is based on mythology and the art book on the history saint. An example table Olympia Manet which explores a traditional theme but so shocking for that period, Venus is represented by a half-world of the time and the only artist working in painting (colors). This vision will not realistic birth with modern art.

Themes and composition

Before the advent of Impressionism other painters, including the Dutch in the ^seventeenth century, such as Jan Steen , had been interested in current topics, while maintaining a traditional approach to composition it was designed placing the main subject in the center of the eye of the beholder. The Impressionists soften the opposition between subject and background, so also in the daily lives of people and nobles.

Another important influence was that of Japanese prints ( Japanese art ), who had arrived in France at the origin in the form of wrapping paper. Art prints of these contributed significantly to the choice of angles "photographic" and unconventional compositions which would become an impressionist.

Edgar Degas was an avid photographer and collector of Japanese prints. Her web class dance shows both influences in its asymmetrical composition. The dancers in the foreground on the left seem to have been taken from life, dressed in awkward positions, and the lower right corner of the canvas is occupied by a vast empty floor space.

The most famous Impressionists in alphabetical order:

• Frdric Bazille (1841-1870)
• Anna Boch (1848-1936)
• Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)
• Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
• Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)
• Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
• Max Libermann (1847-1937)
• Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
• Claude Monet (1840-1926)
• Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
• Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
• Theo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926)
• Sorrolla Joaquin (1863-1923)
• Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)