Guide to Impressionism: History, Characteristics, and Artists

Impressionism was an art movement defined by patchy brushwork and a pastel color scheme meant to capture the artist’s “impression” of the transient effects of atmospheric lighting. This style was groundbreaking because preceding the Impressionists, artists painting in the Neoclassical and Romantic style in the early nineteenth century created images that were highly rendered and had a very clean, finished appearance. By contrast, the Impressionists painted in a style that, to an academic painter, looked like a preliminary sketch that one might create to quickly preserve an idea, that would then be used as a memory aid when the artist returned to their studio. The name Impressionism, coined by critic Louis Leroy, came from Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (1874).

During the nineteenth century, France experienced a great deal of prosperity, upward economic mobility, and technological advances, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, the demand for highly naturalistic oil paintings began to dramatically decrease due to the commercialization of photography. Enter the Impressionists.

• Rejection by the Salon: During the nineteenth century, there was only one way for French artists to establish their reputation, exhibit their work, and gain clientele: the annual state-sponsored exhibition known as the Salon. The paintings accepted into the Salon were selected by the Salon jury and typically aligned with the established aesthetics of academic painting, especially art whose subject matter focused on history, religion, literature, and mythology. During the 1860s and 1870s, artists working in the avant-garde style of Impressionism were consistently rejected by the Salon.
• First Impressionist exhibition (1874): The Impressionists reacted to their rejection by breaking away from the academy and defiantly establishing their own independent exhibition. They pooled their money to rent an exhibition space from the photographer Nadar and opened the first Impressionist exhibition to compete with the Salon of 1874. Their exhibition was a success, and they went on to hold another seven Impressionist exhibitions. The last exhibition was held in 1886, marking the end of the movement.
• Lasting influence: By the mid-1880s, the Impressionists had moved towards exploring their unique styles. The way in which they broke away from the traditions of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts set an example for the modern art movements that followed, beginning with Post-Impressionism. The modern artists that are often grouped together under the umbrella term Post-Impressionist, such as Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh, also sought a new way of expressing the condition of modern life.

Impressionist painters observed the real world as it transformed around them, and then translated their impression of what they saw into poetic, abbreviated, and colorful images.

1. 1. Depiction of contemporary life: Up until the mid-nineteenth century, the lived experience of the middle class was not considered a worthy subject matter for serious painting. Impressionists were preoccupied with depicting aspects of Parisian middle-class life, like people enjoying leisurely activities like attending a theater performance (La Première Sortie by Renoir, 1876), socializing in cafés (Bal du moulin de la Galette by Renoir, 1876), and enjoying the countryside (The Poppy Fields near Argenteuil by Monet, 1873). The Impressionists were highly influenced by Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet’s depictions of everyday life in the 1850s and 1860s.
2. 2. New inventions, new possibilities: Impressionist artists often attempted to capture a fleeting moment in time—like the colors of a sunset reflected on the surface of a river, or the jet of steam billowing from a train engine. The invention of paint tubes and bright synthetic pigments meant that these artists could leave the confines of their studios and paint outside, en plein air, capturing the bustle of urban life in Paris or the serenity of the French countryside. Eugène Boudin was one of the first artists to paint out of doors, and his colorful paintings of figures on the beach served as inspiration for a young Monet.
3. 3. Painting technique: In order to capture the effects of light and shifting atmospheric conditions, the Impressionists rapidly painted small patches or commas of bright color right next to one another. Instead of blending the colors together on their painters’ palette, the Impressionists allowed the colors to be blended optically by the viewer. When seen at a distance, Impressionist paintings appear sharper, and the images appear more coherent, because your eyes blend the individual marks together. From up close, you can often see the individual brushstrokes the artist has placed on the canvas, so much so that the artwork is as much about the image created as it is about the act of painting itself.
4. 4. Serialization: Claude Monet, considered the leader of the Impressionists, often challenged himself to paint the same subject matter at different times of day or in different seasons. The serialization of a single theme—of haystacks, water lilies, or the facade of Rouen Cathedral—was a way for the artist to monetize and merchandise his art, while also pushing his own artistic abilities.
5. 5. Influence of Japanese art: In the 1850s, the western powers in the Pacific pressured Japan to open its borders to international trade after two centuries of self-imposed isolation. As a means of shaping Japan’s international image abroad, delegates displayed examples of Japanese porcelain, bronzes, painting, and prints at the world’s fairs in the late nineteenth century. Impressionist painters sought alternatives to the dominant tastes of the French Academy, and they found a great deal of inspiration from Japanese art. They were particularly attracted to the ways in which Japanese prints depicted glimpses of the momentary or quotidian while presenting the subject matter cropped, surrounded by negative space, and close to the picture plane.
6. 6. Inclusion of women artists: The Impressionist movement was the first artistic movement of the modern era to include women. Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Eva Gonzalès were a few of the most esteemed painters working in the Impressionist style during the late nineteenth century.

The work of these artists came to define the Impressionist movement.

1. 1. Claude Monet: Claude Monet was considered the leader of the Impressionist movement and is perhaps the most famous Impressionist painter. He is well known for loose brushwork, pastel color palette, plein air subject matter, and his serialized paintings of water lilies, haystacks, and landscapes.
2. 2. Edgar Degas: Edgar Degas is best known for the paintings and sculptures he created of ballerinas. He created the first Impressionist sculpture of a young ballerina from the Paris Opera. He exhibited the bronze sculpture wearing a real tulle tutu and a silk ribbon tied in her bronze hair.
3. 3. Berthe Morisot: Berthe Morisot was one of the major female artists of her generation, who often painted scenes that she observed in her daily life.
4. 4. Mary Cassatt: Mary Cassat was a major Impressionist whose work focused heavily on depicting the relationships between mothers and their children.
5. 5. Camille Pissarro: Camille Pissarro is best known for his revelatory landscapes of the French countryside, and of Parisian cityscapes. Pissarro also trained Paul Cézanne, who would go on to develop a unique style that would serve as an inspiration for Cubism.
6. 6. Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Pierre-Auguste Renoir is best known for his depictions of the female nude and scenes from Parisian cultural life.
7. 7. Alfred Sisley: Alfred Sisley was one of the founders of Impressionism, known for his landscape paintings.
8. 8. Frédéric Bazille: Frédéric Bazille was an important early Impressionist who died in 1870 on the battlefield of the Franco-Prussian War, leaving behind a small body of Impressionist work, mostly figures.

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