Impressionist Art

Impressionist Art

Who are impressionists?

The Impressionism movement was founded in Paris as an opposition to the rigid artistic traditions favored by institutions such as the Academia des Beaux-Arts.

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returnRaft of Medusa, Theodore Gericault, 1818-1819

In 1863, Edouard Manet exhibited his painting "Dejeuner sur l’herbe" at the Salon des Refuses. The painting caused commotion, thus founding the Impressionist movement. Although Manet is the proclaimed leader and founder of the group, he was not present at the first group exhibition or any of the other eight collective Impressionist shows.

The Impressionist style of painting emphasized loose painting style rather than finely detailed pictures. The artists of the movement worked mostly outdoors (en plein air) and strived to capture the variations of light at differing times throughout the day. Their paint palettes were colorful and they rarely blacks or grays. Subject matter was most often landscape or scenes from daily life. Impressionists were interested in the use of color, tone, and texture in order to objectively record nature. They emphasized sunlight, shadows, and light. In order to produce vibrant colors, they applied short brush strokes of contrasting colors to the canvas, rather than mixing hues on a palette.

The following are some of the Impressionist artist from this era.

•Claude Monet

•Pierre-Auguste Renoir

•Mary Cassatt

•Edouard Manet

•Edgar Degas

Claude MonetClaude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and highly productive artist of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially in reference toplein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

Impression, soleil levantClaude Monet, 1872Oil on canvas 48 × 63 cm

“Impression, I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it, and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished

than that seascape”.- Critic Louis Leroy, Le Charivari newspaper

Claude Monet cont.Claude Monet cont.

After Monet’s wife,Camille,who on 5 September 1879, a grief-stricken Monet (resolving never to be mired in poverty again) began in earnest to create some of his best paintings of the 19th century. During the early 1880s Monet painted several groups of landscapes and seascapes in what he considered to be campaigns to document the French countryside. His extensive campaigns evolved into his series' paintings.

“Vetheuil in the Fog”, 1879, Monet, Paris.

“Camille Monet, on her deathbed”, Monet 1879

Claude Monet cont.Claude Monet cont.

Water Lilies, 1920-1926,

Haystacks, (sunset), 1890-1891,

Madame Monet in a Japanese Costume, 1875

Pierre-Auguste RenoirPierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Aguste Renoir was a French artist who was aleading painter in the development of the Impressioniststyle. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality.

As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where hisdrawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled n art school. He often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.

Renoir had his first acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London. In the late 1800’s Renoir began to travel to see art made by a variety of artists or places that inspired local artist such as Delacroix, Diego Velázquez, and the Italian masters Titian and Raphael. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes.

Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Cont.Pierre-Auguste Renoir Cont.

Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette), 1876

The Large Bathers, 1887



By the Water, 1880

Edouard ManetEdouard ManetEdouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first nineteenth century artists to paint modern-life subjects, (he painted the common person-every day life). He was pivotal in the change from Realism to Impressionism.His early masterworks The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia created a great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism as we know today. These paintings are considered the beginning of modern art.

Manet's paintings of cafe scenes are observations of social life in nineteenth century Paris. People are depicted drinking beer, listening to music, flirting, reading, or waiting. Many of these paintings were based on sketches executed on the spot

Edouard Manet Cont.Edouard Manet Cont.

Such renderings represent the painted journal of a flaneur.

The term flaneur comes from the French masculine noun flaneur, which has the basic meaning of a "stroller", "lounger", "loafer”. Manet as an artist considered himself to be a “Flaneur” he was a person who walks the city in order to experience it.

Café Concet,1878A Bar at the Folies-Bergere,1882


Manet's response to modern life included works devoted to war, in subjects that may be seen as updated interpretations of the genre of "history painting”.


Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, 1868


“Battle of the Kearsarge and Alabama” (1864)

A sea skirmish from the American Civil War which took place off the French coast, and may have been witnessed by the artist.

Mary CassattMary Cassatt

was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.

was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.

In 1877, both her entries were rejected by the French salon, and for the first time in seven years she had no works in the Salon. At this low point in her career she was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety.

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Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878

Mary Cassatt Cont.Mary Cassatt Cont.


At the Window, 1889

Degas had considerable influence on Cassatt. She became extremely proficient in the use of pastels, eventually creating many of her most important works in this medium.

She had strong feelings for him but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature. The sophisticated and well-dressed Degas, then forty-five, was a welcome dinner guest at the Cassatt residence


The 1890s were Cassatt's busiest and most creative time. She had matured considerably and became more diplomatic and less blunt in her opinions. She also became a role model for young American artists who sought her advice.

Maternal Kiss, 1896 The Child's Bath (The Bath),1893

Edgar DegasEdgar Degas

In 1855, Degas met Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, whom he revered, andwas advised by him to "draw lines, young man, many lines." In April of that same year,Degas received admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he studied drawing.In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, and studiedfor the next three years. There he drew and painted copies after Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and other artists of the Renaissance,It was during this period that Degas studied and became accomplished in the techniques of high, academic, and classical art.

Although he exhibited annually in the Salon during the next five years, he submitted no more history paintings, and his painting The Fallen Jockey (Salon of 1866) signaled his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter. The change in his art was also influenced primarily by the example of Edouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 while copying art in the Louvre.

Edgar Degas Cont.Edgar Degas Cont.

Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that, as art historian Frederick Hartt says, he "never adopted the Impressionist color fleck", and he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air.

"He was often as anti-impressionist as the critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian Carol Armstrong; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine.

What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing.”

Even so he is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists, most notably Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet, all relate him closely to the Impressionist movement. Degas has his own distinct style, one reflecting his deep respect for the old masters and his great admiration for Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugine Delacroix.


The Dance Class (La Classe de Danse),1873-1876, oil on canvas


Miss Lala at the Circus Fernando, Patel, 1879

Dancers at The Bar, Pastel 1888,


At the Races in the Countryside, oil on canvas,1869

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Impressionist Art