Impressionism is an art movement that originated from painting. The movement was founded in France in the second half of the nineteenth century. Initially it emerged as a revolting movement against the then generally accepted and officially recognized by the state classical academic art. Eventually it developed into a completely new stylistic conception that was at the cradle of twentieth century modernism. Typical aspects of Impressionism are the focus on the perception of the moment ('impression'), the choice of themes from 'modern life', the special attention to light effects and color, a sketch-like method and working in the studio as well as in the open air.
The best known representatives included painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne. The Impressionists exhibited their work between 1874 and 1886 at eight self-organized exhibitions in Paris. After 1886, their role as an innovator was taken over by neo- and post-Impressionist groups, although after that time the movement would continue to flourish in various countries outside France.
Even in the 21st century, Impressionism can still boast great popularity. Themed exhibitions and Impressionist sections of major museums attract high visitor numbers. In terms of prices, Impressionist masterpieces can compete with 'old masters'.
Impressionism also had an effect on other art forms, such as classical music, literature, sculpture and photography.graph.
The best known representatives included painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne. The Impressionists exhibited their work between 1874 and 1886 at eight self-organized exhibitions in Paris. After 1886, their role as an innovator was taken over by neo- and post-Impressionist groups, although after that time the movement would continue to flourish in various countries outside France.
Even in the 21st century, Impressionism can still boast great popularity. Themed exhibitions and Impressionist sections of major museums attract high visitor numbers. In terms of prices, Impressionist masterpieces can compete with 'old masters'.
Impressionism also had an effect on other art forms, such as classical music, literature, sculpture and photography.graph.
Style and characteristics
There is no general theory of Impressionism. Renoir once said, 'I have no rules or methods. Anyone can come and see what I am using or watch me painting. They will see that I have no secrets. The question of what typifies impressionism cannot be answered unambiguously and can differ greatly from one artist to another.
Nevertheless, there are a number of criteria that are generally seen as distinctive.
Impression, sketchy method
In the first place, reference can be made to the term 'impression', which came to belong to the impressionist vocabulary par excellence: the immediate experience of the moment, often a random scene from everyday life, without further message or purpose. The rendering was no longer about an objective registration of reality, but mainly the subjective perception of the artist that became the guiding principle, with a great deal of attention to atmosphere. The artist was satisfied and 'finished' as soon as the impression had been captured, which often reinforced the spontaneous and sketchy impression of a work of art: as if it had been put on canvas in a few minutes, in a loose touch, not completely finished. The smooth brushstrokes and the apparently sloppy execution can be seen as metaphors for the fleeting moment and the speed of everyday life.
Themes from contemporary life
Although portraits and landscapes also remained in vogue, Impressionism was also innovative in its themes, which were often chosen from contemporary and everyday life. For the first time, workers, prostitutes, café-goers, random passers-by and other 'ordinary people' were systematically made the subject of a painting, often in locations where modern life took place par excellence: stations, bridges and parks, opera houses, beaches, regattas , and so on. The changing Paris, transformed in the 1860s by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann from an old town full of medieval alleys to a modern metropolis with wide boulevards, provided the ideal backdrop. By making the 'impressions' of changing life the focal point of their art, the Impressionists emphasized the aspect of individuality that would become a hallmark of the new modern society. In this sense, Impressionist art can also be seen as a reflection of a process of social change.
The Impressionists' attention to technological developments can also be linked to the interest of many of them in emerging photography, which put the aim of painting in a different light. It is typical that the Impressionists did not see this development as a threat, but embraced the new medium fully. The fleeting representation of people and objects as well as the use of cut-offs (or even complete empty spaces in the composition) can clearly be traced back to the technique of photography.
Light and color work in the open air
In the technical elaboration, the Impressionists were particularly notable for their treatment of contrast, color and light. Much attention was paid to the different shades in changing light and to the interrelationships of the color values, which were often shown in complementary tones on a finely divided scale from light to dark. Motifs, shapes and outlines (lines) were subordinated to this. Moreover, the use of color became brighter and more intense, which coincided with an increase in color in the outside world: chemical processes had led to an enormous growth in the availability of dyes. For example, this led to an increase in colorful clothes on the street, but also to a greater availability of all kinds of pigments, often new ones, such as chrome green. Black was rarely used. The elementary colors were often applied wet-on-wet in loosely juxtaposed keys on canvas, so that they formed the desired color variations from a distance and thus allowed a more subtle nuance. The material precision of the forms in nature was no longer important, but rather the colorful solution of sun, light and air.
The ready-made availability of paint in tubes, after its invention by Geoffrey Rand in 1841, furthermore promoted the work 'en plein air', which was yet another aspect that typified the Impressionist painter. Impressionists wanted to depict the 'perceived' directly as it showed itself to them and as they experienced the impression on the spot. They could therefore always be found on the street or somewhere in the landscape, at least outside.
Context and influence
During the nineteenth century, Paris was increasingly regarded as the artistic center of the world. After the heyday of Romanticism, academic-based realistic French painting had become prominent in Europe around 1850. An important sub-movement was neoclassicism, which exemplified classical Greek and Roman art and sought themes in history and mythology. Many works carried a message. The most important representatives were Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, although the latter deviated from the usual rules because he regarded color as the most important visual means and not the lines.
A new development in realistic painting was set in motion around 1850 by the painters of the Barbizon School. From an artists' colony just south of Paris, this group of young artists created genre works and landscapes, without romantic finery, but with a great deal of attention to the different manifestations of light. Important representatives were Theodore Rousseau, Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny. The painters of the Barbizon School worked in the great outdoors, 'en plein air', where they wanted to directly convey the mood of nature.
The origin of Impressionism should be placed in the line of the development that followed Realism and Neoclassicism. A direct influence came from Delacroix and, as said, from the Barbizon painters, with whom many Impressionists also collaborated in the 1860s. However, influences also came from abroad. For example, the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, who worked in France in France, made a series of Impressionist paintings of Notre Dame around 1860, each time with a different lighting. In addition, the Englishman William Turner may be mentioned, whose work impressed a number of early Impressionists. They were all painters who showed that there were new paths in art, different paths than the ones then prevailing, the boundaries of which were strictly guarded in France around 1860 by the conservative-classicist Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Originate
The first group of Impressionists can be delineated quite precisely. It was a close-knit group of friends, predominantly from the well-to-do bourgeoisie, who moved together from the 1860s onwards and who with an open mind went in search of new ways. This group included Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Armand Guillaumin. Often, Édouard Manet is also included in this group, although he clearly continued to go his own way and only later switched to an impressionist method. Paul Cézanne and Berthe Morisot were also affiliated. Many of these relatively young painters knew each other from partly communal training studios, including those of Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet. From 1866 they would meet regularly at the Café Guerbois on the Rue des Batignolles, which is why they were for a time called the 'Batignolles group'. Gradually they found themselves in a shared vision of painting, which no longer started from the representation of an objective reality, but from what the painter feels and experiences when looking at that reality. Painting became an individual experience, looking at a painting just as much. By 1870 the group had found itself broadly in the recognizable features as described earlier, which shortly later would be captured in the term impressionism.
However, the emergence of Impressionism as a movement does not stand alone, but must be understood in the light of the dominant position of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Paris salon within the Paris art world. The appointed members of the Académie determined the rules that art had to comply with and on that basis personally selected the works for the leading salon exhibitions, which were held annually. There was little room for innovative ideas. Works by the early Impressionists group were systematically ignored. Buoyed by the success that some of them had at the first Salon des Refusés in 1863 and the attention of a number of new art dealers and befriended writers, the idea gradually arose to abandon the Académie and the Paris salon and go their own way. to go. After most of the group's painters were once again banned from the Paris World's Fair in 1867, they hatched a plan for their own exhibition, but this was canceled due to a lack of money. Six years later they tried again.
First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874
For the Salon of 1873, only a few of the mentioned painters had submitted works and of them only Manet and Morisot were successful. Admittedly, there was also a Salon des Refusés, but the idea that you could also get ahead without the Salon gained more and more ground. On December 27, 1873, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Morisot, Béliard, Lepic, Levert, Rouart and Guillaumin founded the 'Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculptors, engravers etc.' They would prepare for the first major Impressionist exhibition a few months later. There was no jointly formulated program.
The first Impressionist exhibition was held from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, on Boulevard des Capucines. A proposal by Degas to name the group "La Capucine" was therefore rejected. The aim was not so much to promote a new painting style, but above all to escape the selection criteria of the Salon and to create a new exhibition opportunity. Each artist was allowed to exhibit two works for 60 francs. There was no selection, there was a draw for the suspension and there were no prizes. A total of 165 works were presented, including by Renoir, Monet, Dégas, Pissarro, Cézanne, Guillaumin and Morisot. Some works would later become part of the canon of Impressionism, but there was also a lot of work by less well-known, now almost forgotten painters, who often had nothing to do with the 'Batignolles group'. In total there were 3500 paying visitors, which was expected, but the landmark character that would later be attributed to the exhibition was certainly not recognized at that time, not even in the press.
The reviews in newspapers and magazines at the exhibition were variable and certainly not one-sidedly negative, as would be suggested later on. That did not alter the fact that there were also downright hostile reactions. A satirical piece by Louis Leroy in the magazine 'Le Charivari' under the title 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists' eventually gave the movement its definitive name. Referring to Monet's Impression, soleil levant, he disparaged the 'impressions' that the artists 'tried to make'. He had an imaginary friend exclaim, “Is this figure ugly enough? On the front it has eyes, ears and a mouth. That is quite a lot. The Impressionists wouldn't have bothered to add these details! '
Confirmation, 1874-1886
In the period 1874-1886 eight 'great impressionist exhibitions' were to be held. After the first one in 1874, subsequent exhibitions took place in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886. The span of twelve years between the first and last exhibition is now considered the heyday of French Impressionism. The period is characterized by a gradual acceptance and ultimately definitive recognition as an artistically leading art movement. In retrospect, the third exhibition in 1877 is often seen as a turning point and a highlight, with the exhibition of various works that later became exemplary for Impressionist painting: Bal du moulin de la Galette by Renoir, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie by Caillebotte and Monet's Pont de l'Europe series. The standard criticism remained, but more and more enthusiasm and appreciation was also heard. The growing confidence of the Impressionists was reflected in 1879 in its own magazine, 'La Vie moderne', with Renoir as the driving force. There was a constant search for innovation. With Caillebotte, Marie Bracquemond, the American painter Mary Cassatt introduced by Degas, the Italian Federico Zandomeneghi and the young Paul Gauguin, new talents also presented themselves, which provided the necessary broadening.
A decisive role in the increasing success of the Impressionists was played by a number of progressive art dealers, the main exponent being Paul Durand-Ruel. Among the new bourgeoisie they found a promising market for Impressionist works, which often had the practical advantage of being a great fit in their new Parisian mansions in size. Durand-Ruel also organized successful exhibitions of the Impressionists abroad, including in London and Brussels, which in turn had a positive impact on home criticism in France. Through the connections of Mary Cassatt, he also managed to tap an important market for impressionist works in the United States in the 1880s. An exhibition of Impressionist works in New York in 1886 sparked a real stampede. The increased interest in their work and commercial success made it increasingly possible for the French Impressionists to make a living from the late 1870s. However, this fact did not seem to benefit the solidarity among the artists.
Differences and disagreements
Gradually, disagreements also arose in the initially close-knit artists' group, among other things about the design of the exhibitions (especially from edition four in 1879), but also about working methods. There was disagreement about the use of line markings and about the extent to which the sketchy aspect should prevail over more realistic elaborations. Renoir and Sisley were missing on the fourth, fifth and sixth Impressionist exhibitions because of such discussions, Monet submitted mostly older works for the fourth and was missing on the next two editions. The seventh edition was actually nothing more than a kind of sale edition from the Durand-Ruel warehouse.
Partly to blame for the tensions was the meanwhile increased status of the Impressionists. The questionable position of rebellious outsiders was gradually abandoned, most of them got better financially, and painters like Monet and Renoir welcomed the rapprochement between 'official' and 'modern' art. When Renoir also submitted works in 1878 and Monet in 1880 and were admitted to the Salon, it aroused resentment among many of their colleagues. Renoir in particular, a figurehead of the Impressionists, would become increasingly conventional in his style.
In the mid-1880s, Impressionism was in danger of losing its uniform face, despite all its diversity. This observation was confirmed during the eighth and last impressionist exhibition. It drew attention in two ways with works that deviated from the now well-known impressionist frameworks. First of all, Degas exhibited six sensational nudes in pastel, in which he was criticized for the strong lines (which was seen as non-impressionistic) and the unflattering depiction of the women. Most controversial, however, was the exhibition of a number of paintings by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who worked with a pointillist technique. These works were exhibited in a separate space and provoked much discussion and even ridicule, among fellow exhibitors as well as critics. It would eventually lead to a broadening of the impressionist concept, but also to a certain diversification and split-off.
Neo and Post Impressionism
The eighth Impressionist exhibition made it clear that Impressionism in Paris, as a renewal movement, was once again seen as a downward trend. A number of clearly deviating sub-currents arose, initially initiated by neo-impressionism, later grouped together under the collective name post-impressionism.
Signac and Seurat developed their pointillist technique further into scientifically based color theories and adapted the name neo-impressionism. Soon they would also influence some of the original Impressionists, most notably Camille Pissarro. Vincent van Gogh, who arrived in Paris in 1886 just in time to visit the last Impressionist exhibition, was also strongly influenced by their Divisionist approach.
In addition, a number of artists' colonies developed in the late 1880s, particularly in Brittany, which would develop their own post-impressionist style. Most famous are Les Nabis and the Pont-Aven School, with Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard and Émile Bernard as the main pioneers. In their own variant of Impressionism, called Cloisonnism or Syntheticism, they emphasized large, often clearly defined areas of color. In doing so, they also emphatically preluded to Symbolism, which began to make its appearance in painting in the same period.
In Paris during this period, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in particular made his mark. Under the influence of Degas he developed his own post-impressionist style, in which the lines again played an important role. In Toulouse-Lautrec (as well as many other post-impressionists at the time, including Van Gogh), influences from Japonism also played a role in the late 1880s. Two-dimensional compositions and the attention to contours and large areas of color would eventually lead to the flow of Fauvism.
All things considered, a multitude of new styles emerged in France between 1886 and 1900 that emerged directly from Impressionism, were clearly related to it, but at the same time had an unmistakable signature of their own. In the years that followed, this development would continue in the modernism of the twentieth century, mainly due to a reduced attention to realistic principles in perspective management and proportions. Impressionism may be called the starting point. It is striking that impressionism is still popular with both artists and art lovers to this day. Contemporary impressionism is still selling very well.
Impressionism outside of France
While Impressionism was overtaken by new movements in France after 1886, it flourished more emphatically abroad, a development that would last until the First World War. The great flight that Impressionism took in the United States was striking. Many American artists, including many women, had moved to France after the American Civil War to study art and many of them were open to the renewal drive of Impressionism from the outset. When they later returned to the United States, they took their experiences with them, founded colonies, painted 'en plein air' and developed their own American form of Impressionism. Well-known names were, in addition to pioneer Mary Cassatt, who already made a name for herself in France: William Merritt Chase, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore Robinson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir. The 'open mind' for Impressionist art kept pace with the interest of the American upper class in Impressionist works of art, which traders like Durand-Ruel and his sons took advantage of. At the end of the nineteenth century, the largest private collections of Impressionist works in the world were created, which later became the bases for various museums.
In addition to the United States, Impressionism also flourished from the mid-1880s in the Danish seaside town of Skagen, where the Skagen painters tried to capture the intense northern light. In Australia, a similar development took place around the Heidelberg School, with Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin. Other well-known non-French Impressionists at the end of the nineteenth century were the British Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and Roderic O'Conor, the Canadian James Wilson Morrice, the Germans Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt, the Russians Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, Italians Giuseppe De Nittis and Federico Zandomeneghi, Swedish Anders Zorn, Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla, Polish Olga Boznańska, Romanian Nicolae Grigorescu and Serbian Nadežda Petrović. It is striking that almost all these non-French painters received their training in Paris.
There is no general theory of Impressionism. Renoir once said, 'I have no rules or methods. Anyone can come and see what I am using or watch me painting. They will see that I have no secrets. The question of what typifies impressionism cannot be answered unambiguously and can differ greatly from one artist to another.
Nevertheless, there are a number of criteria that are generally seen as distinctive.
Impression, sketchy method
In the first place, reference can be made to the term 'impression', which came to belong to the impressionist vocabulary par excellence: the immediate experience of the moment, often a random scene from everyday life, without further message or purpose. The rendering was no longer about an objective registration of reality, but mainly the subjective perception of the artist that became the guiding principle, with a great deal of attention to atmosphere. The artist was satisfied and 'finished' as soon as the impression had been captured, which often reinforced the spontaneous and sketchy impression of a work of art: as if it had been put on canvas in a few minutes, in a loose touch, not completely finished. The smooth brushstrokes and the apparently sloppy execution can be seen as metaphors for the fleeting moment and the speed of everyday life.
Themes from contemporary life
Although portraits and landscapes also remained in vogue, Impressionism was also innovative in its themes, which were often chosen from contemporary and everyday life. For the first time, workers, prostitutes, café-goers, random passers-by and other 'ordinary people' were systematically made the subject of a painting, often in locations where modern life took place par excellence: stations, bridges and parks, opera houses, beaches, regattas , and so on. The changing Paris, transformed in the 1860s by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann from an old town full of medieval alleys to a modern metropolis with wide boulevards, provided the ideal backdrop. By making the 'impressions' of changing life the focal point of their art, the Impressionists emphasized the aspect of individuality that would become a hallmark of the new modern society. In this sense, Impressionist art can also be seen as a reflection of a process of social change.
The Impressionists' attention to technological developments can also be linked to the interest of many of them in emerging photography, which put the aim of painting in a different light. It is typical that the Impressionists did not see this development as a threat, but embraced the new medium fully. The fleeting representation of people and objects as well as the use of cut-offs (or even complete empty spaces in the composition) can clearly be traced back to the technique of photography.
Light and color work in the open air
In the technical elaboration, the Impressionists were particularly notable for their treatment of contrast, color and light. Much attention was paid to the different shades in changing light and to the interrelationships of the color values, which were often shown in complementary tones on a finely divided scale from light to dark. Motifs, shapes and outlines (lines) were subordinated to this. Moreover, the use of color became brighter and more intense, which coincided with an increase in color in the outside world: chemical processes had led to an enormous growth in the availability of dyes. For example, this led to an increase in colorful clothes on the street, but also to a greater availability of all kinds of pigments, often new ones, such as chrome green. Black was rarely used. The elementary colors were often applied wet-on-wet in loosely juxtaposed keys on canvas, so that they formed the desired color variations from a distance and thus allowed a more subtle nuance. The material precision of the forms in nature was no longer important, but rather the colorful solution of sun, light and air.
The ready-made availability of paint in tubes, after its invention by Geoffrey Rand in 1841, furthermore promoted the work 'en plein air', which was yet another aspect that typified the Impressionist painter. Impressionists wanted to depict the 'perceived' directly as it showed itself to them and as they experienced the impression on the spot. They could therefore always be found on the street or somewhere in the landscape, at least outside.
Context and influence
During the nineteenth century, Paris was increasingly regarded as the artistic center of the world. After the heyday of Romanticism, academic-based realistic French painting had become prominent in Europe around 1850. An important sub-movement was neoclassicism, which exemplified classical Greek and Roman art and sought themes in history and mythology. Many works carried a message. The most important representatives were Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, although the latter deviated from the usual rules because he regarded color as the most important visual means and not the lines.
A new development in realistic painting was set in motion around 1850 by the painters of the Barbizon School. From an artists' colony just south of Paris, this group of young artists created genre works and landscapes, without romantic finery, but with a great deal of attention to the different manifestations of light. Important representatives were Theodore Rousseau, Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny. The painters of the Barbizon School worked in the great outdoors, 'en plein air', where they wanted to directly convey the mood of nature.
The origin of Impressionism should be placed in the line of the development that followed Realism and Neoclassicism. A direct influence came from Delacroix and, as said, from the Barbizon painters, with whom many Impressionists also collaborated in the 1860s. However, influences also came from abroad. For example, the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, who worked in France in France, made a series of Impressionist paintings of Notre Dame around 1860, each time with a different lighting. In addition, the Englishman William Turner may be mentioned, whose work impressed a number of early Impressionists. They were all painters who showed that there were new paths in art, different paths than the ones then prevailing, the boundaries of which were strictly guarded in France around 1860 by the conservative-classicist Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Originate
The first group of Impressionists can be delineated quite precisely. It was a close-knit group of friends, predominantly from the well-to-do bourgeoisie, who moved together from the 1860s onwards and who with an open mind went in search of new ways. This group included Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Armand Guillaumin. Often, Édouard Manet is also included in this group, although he clearly continued to go his own way and only later switched to an impressionist method. Paul Cézanne and Berthe Morisot were also affiliated. Many of these relatively young painters knew each other from partly communal training studios, including those of Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet. From 1866 they would meet regularly at the Café Guerbois on the Rue des Batignolles, which is why they were for a time called the 'Batignolles group'. Gradually they found themselves in a shared vision of painting, which no longer started from the representation of an objective reality, but from what the painter feels and experiences when looking at that reality. Painting became an individual experience, looking at a painting just as much. By 1870 the group had found itself broadly in the recognizable features as described earlier, which shortly later would be captured in the term impressionism.
However, the emergence of Impressionism as a movement does not stand alone, but must be understood in the light of the dominant position of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Paris salon within the Paris art world. The appointed members of the Académie determined the rules that art had to comply with and on that basis personally selected the works for the leading salon exhibitions, which were held annually. There was little room for innovative ideas. Works by the early Impressionists group were systematically ignored. Buoyed by the success that some of them had at the first Salon des Refusés in 1863 and the attention of a number of new art dealers and befriended writers, the idea gradually arose to abandon the Académie and the Paris salon and go their own way. to go. After most of the group's painters were once again banned from the Paris World's Fair in 1867, they hatched a plan for their own exhibition, but this was canceled due to a lack of money. Six years later they tried again.
First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874
For the Salon of 1873, only a few of the mentioned painters had submitted works and of them only Manet and Morisot were successful. Admittedly, there was also a Salon des Refusés, but the idea that you could also get ahead without the Salon gained more and more ground. On December 27, 1873, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Morisot, Béliard, Lepic, Levert, Rouart and Guillaumin founded the 'Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculptors, engravers etc.' They would prepare for the first major Impressionist exhibition a few months later. There was no jointly formulated program.
The first Impressionist exhibition was held from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, on Boulevard des Capucines. A proposal by Degas to name the group "La Capucine" was therefore rejected. The aim was not so much to promote a new painting style, but above all to escape the selection criteria of the Salon and to create a new exhibition opportunity. Each artist was allowed to exhibit two works for 60 francs. There was no selection, there was a draw for the suspension and there were no prizes. A total of 165 works were presented, including by Renoir, Monet, Dégas, Pissarro, Cézanne, Guillaumin and Morisot. Some works would later become part of the canon of Impressionism, but there was also a lot of work by less well-known, now almost forgotten painters, who often had nothing to do with the 'Batignolles group'. In total there were 3500 paying visitors, which was expected, but the landmark character that would later be attributed to the exhibition was certainly not recognized at that time, not even in the press.
The reviews in newspapers and magazines at the exhibition were variable and certainly not one-sidedly negative, as would be suggested later on. That did not alter the fact that there were also downright hostile reactions. A satirical piece by Louis Leroy in the magazine 'Le Charivari' under the title 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists' eventually gave the movement its definitive name. Referring to Monet's Impression, soleil levant, he disparaged the 'impressions' that the artists 'tried to make'. He had an imaginary friend exclaim, “Is this figure ugly enough? On the front it has eyes, ears and a mouth. That is quite a lot. The Impressionists wouldn't have bothered to add these details! '
Confirmation, 1874-1886
In the period 1874-1886 eight 'great impressionist exhibitions' were to be held. After the first one in 1874, subsequent exhibitions took place in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886. The span of twelve years between the first and last exhibition is now considered the heyday of French Impressionism. The period is characterized by a gradual acceptance and ultimately definitive recognition as an artistically leading art movement. In retrospect, the third exhibition in 1877 is often seen as a turning point and a highlight, with the exhibition of various works that later became exemplary for Impressionist painting: Bal du moulin de la Galette by Renoir, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie by Caillebotte and Monet's Pont de l'Europe series. The standard criticism remained, but more and more enthusiasm and appreciation was also heard. The growing confidence of the Impressionists was reflected in 1879 in its own magazine, 'La Vie moderne', with Renoir as the driving force. There was a constant search for innovation. With Caillebotte, Marie Bracquemond, the American painter Mary Cassatt introduced by Degas, the Italian Federico Zandomeneghi and the young Paul Gauguin, new talents also presented themselves, which provided the necessary broadening.
A decisive role in the increasing success of the Impressionists was played by a number of progressive art dealers, the main exponent being Paul Durand-Ruel. Among the new bourgeoisie they found a promising market for Impressionist works, which often had the practical advantage of being a great fit in their new Parisian mansions in size. Durand-Ruel also organized successful exhibitions of the Impressionists abroad, including in London and Brussels, which in turn had a positive impact on home criticism in France. Through the connections of Mary Cassatt, he also managed to tap an important market for impressionist works in the United States in the 1880s. An exhibition of Impressionist works in New York in 1886 sparked a real stampede. The increased interest in their work and commercial success made it increasingly possible for the French Impressionists to make a living from the late 1870s. However, this fact did not seem to benefit the solidarity among the artists.
Differences and disagreements
Gradually, disagreements also arose in the initially close-knit artists' group, among other things about the design of the exhibitions (especially from edition four in 1879), but also about working methods. There was disagreement about the use of line markings and about the extent to which the sketchy aspect should prevail over more realistic elaborations. Renoir and Sisley were missing on the fourth, fifth and sixth Impressionist exhibitions because of such discussions, Monet submitted mostly older works for the fourth and was missing on the next two editions. The seventh edition was actually nothing more than a kind of sale edition from the Durand-Ruel warehouse.
Partly to blame for the tensions was the meanwhile increased status of the Impressionists. The questionable position of rebellious outsiders was gradually abandoned, most of them got better financially, and painters like Monet and Renoir welcomed the rapprochement between 'official' and 'modern' art. When Renoir also submitted works in 1878 and Monet in 1880 and were admitted to the Salon, it aroused resentment among many of their colleagues. Renoir in particular, a figurehead of the Impressionists, would become increasingly conventional in his style.
In the mid-1880s, Impressionism was in danger of losing its uniform face, despite all its diversity. This observation was confirmed during the eighth and last impressionist exhibition. It drew attention in two ways with works that deviated from the now well-known impressionist frameworks. First of all, Degas exhibited six sensational nudes in pastel, in which he was criticized for the strong lines (which was seen as non-impressionistic) and the unflattering depiction of the women. Most controversial, however, was the exhibition of a number of paintings by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who worked with a pointillist technique. These works were exhibited in a separate space and provoked much discussion and even ridicule, among fellow exhibitors as well as critics. It would eventually lead to a broadening of the impressionist concept, but also to a certain diversification and split-off.
Neo and Post Impressionism
The eighth Impressionist exhibition made it clear that Impressionism in Paris, as a renewal movement, was once again seen as a downward trend. A number of clearly deviating sub-currents arose, initially initiated by neo-impressionism, later grouped together under the collective name post-impressionism.
Signac and Seurat developed their pointillist technique further into scientifically based color theories and adapted the name neo-impressionism. Soon they would also influence some of the original Impressionists, most notably Camille Pissarro. Vincent van Gogh, who arrived in Paris in 1886 just in time to visit the last Impressionist exhibition, was also strongly influenced by their Divisionist approach.
In addition, a number of artists' colonies developed in the late 1880s, particularly in Brittany, which would develop their own post-impressionist style. Most famous are Les Nabis and the Pont-Aven School, with Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard and Émile Bernard as the main pioneers. In their own variant of Impressionism, called Cloisonnism or Syntheticism, they emphasized large, often clearly defined areas of color. In doing so, they also emphatically preluded to Symbolism, which began to make its appearance in painting in the same period.
In Paris during this period, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in particular made his mark. Under the influence of Degas he developed his own post-impressionist style, in which the lines again played an important role. In Toulouse-Lautrec (as well as many other post-impressionists at the time, including Van Gogh), influences from Japonism also played a role in the late 1880s. Two-dimensional compositions and the attention to contours and large areas of color would eventually lead to the flow of Fauvism.
All things considered, a multitude of new styles emerged in France between 1886 and 1900 that emerged directly from Impressionism, were clearly related to it, but at the same time had an unmistakable signature of their own. In the years that followed, this development would continue in the modernism of the twentieth century, mainly due to a reduced attention to realistic principles in perspective management and proportions. Impressionism may be called the starting point. It is striking that impressionism is still popular with both artists and art lovers to this day. Contemporary impressionism is still selling very well.
Impressionism outside of France
While Impressionism was overtaken by new movements in France after 1886, it flourished more emphatically abroad, a development that would last until the First World War. The great flight that Impressionism took in the United States was striking. Many American artists, including many women, had moved to France after the American Civil War to study art and many of them were open to the renewal drive of Impressionism from the outset. When they later returned to the United States, they took their experiences with them, founded colonies, painted 'en plein air' and developed their own American form of Impressionism. Well-known names were, in addition to pioneer Mary Cassatt, who already made a name for herself in France: William Merritt Chase, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore Robinson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir. The 'open mind' for Impressionist art kept pace with the interest of the American upper class in Impressionist works of art, which traders like Durand-Ruel and his sons took advantage of. At the end of the nineteenth century, the largest private collections of Impressionist works in the world were created, which later became the bases for various museums.
In addition to the United States, Impressionism also flourished from the mid-1880s in the Danish seaside town of Skagen, where the Skagen painters tried to capture the intense northern light. In Australia, a similar development took place around the Heidelberg School, with Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin. Other well-known non-French Impressionists at the end of the nineteenth century were the British Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and Roderic O'Conor, the Canadian James Wilson Morrice, the Germans Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt, the Russians Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, Italians Giuseppe De Nittis and Federico Zandomeneghi, Swedish Anders Zorn, Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla, Polish Olga Boznańska, Romanian Nicolae Grigorescu and Serbian Nadežda Petrović. It is striking that almost all these non-French painters received their training in Paris.
Paintings by Chris van Dijk