Impressionism Flashcards
Impressionists and Independent Art exhibitions
- 1863 - Napoleon III established the salon des refuses (salon of the rejected) to exhibit works rejected by the official salon
- 1867 - Manet held a private exhibition of his own paintings
- 1873 - the Anonymous society of painters, sculptors and engravers was founded by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, among others
- 1874 - Monet’s impression: sunrise was badly criticized and the group was ironically named the “impressionists”
- from 1874 - 1886, the group held 8 exhibitions
Impressionism characteristics
- attitude - anti academic standard and values
- influenced by realism
— liberation of art from traditional themes, painting real people, real life
— painting en plein air, finished works outdoor, under sunlight
— pursuit of optical realism - captured the fleeting moment of the rapidly changing world, conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions - themes
— contemporary lifestyles - modern parisian life and leisure activities (horse-racing, water sport, parties, performances etc)
— images of the “floating world” - influence of japanese art
— images of Bohemian artists and their friends
— landscape and cityscapes - styles
— developed a scientific attitude towards the structure of colour and light - systematic use of complementary colours, use of coloured shadows (form eugene Delacroix) (sepia eliminated)
— juxtaposing colours bluntly instead of mixing them together to achieve smooth transitions
— broken brushstrokes, blurry images, sketch-like finish - influenced by japanese woodcut prints
— unusual format, angle of composition, themes, homogeneous colour (flatness, abstraction) - influenced by photography
— snapshot-like compositions, arbitrary poses and figures
Edouard Manet
- born in paris in a rich family
- studied with thomas couture, a neoclassicist
- attracted by Delacroix’s theory of colour and Corot’s idea of realism
- attracted by spanish and dutch baroque painting
- 1865 - travelled to spain, deeply impressed by the works of francisco de goya
- influenced and was influenced by the core members of the impressionists, but never exhibited with them
- is he a realist or impressionist?
Edouard Manet - Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the grass)
- persons in the foreground: Manet’s brother Eugene, sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof, and model Victorine Meurend
— ManetL the chief actor in the painting is light - objects are treated as flat planes reacting to light perceived by the eyes - exhibited in Salon des Refuses, its subject matter and style shocked the world
- critique: ordinary men and promiscuous women in a parisian park
- inspirations
— Marcantonio Raimondi - Judgement of Paris
—— Manet adopted the classicial triangular composition and posture of figures of this painting
— Giorgione or titan - Country Concert
—— renaissance venetian painting
Edouard Manet - Olympia
- scandalous - a prostitute with a confrontational gaze in a shameless, provocative pose
- critique - rough brushstrokes, abrupt shifts in tonality, composition in pure colours, no intermediate tones to fuse the different colour together
- inspired by Titan - Venus of Urbino
Alexandre Cabanel - the birth of venus
- had tremendous success in the Salon of 1863
- traditional and academic - diffused light, realistic rendering, smooth finish
- appeals to the taste of the high society - eroticism in disguise of mythological subject
Edouard Manet - execution of emperor maximilian
- critique on Napoleon III’s politics in Mexico
- In a trip to spain in 1865, Manet discovered the works of Francisco de goya and was very impressed by him, so he created a few works modelling on those of goya (executions of the third of may)
- Note: flatness of the uniformed and the sketchy finish of the background
Edouard Manet - Monet working in his boat in Argenteuil
- influenced by Monet and his friends, painted with him en plein air (in open air)
- Manet came from a rich family and was never a close friend of those “Bohemian artists” Nevertheless he was introduced to Monet through Berthe Morisot and became a friend of Monet
Claude Oscar Monet
- born in a poor family in Paris
- 1845- moved to a Le Havre( Normandy) worked as a caricaturist
- 1850s and 1860s - influenced by Pre-impressionistis
— Eugene Boudin, a local landscape painter
— Johann Barthold Jongkind, a dutch landscape painter
— to catch the ever-changing colour and light and to represent the vivid and vital energy of objects - early 1860s, moved to Bougival and became neighbour of Marc Gabriel Gleyre (neo-classicist)
- 1870-71 - stayed in London because of Franco-Prussian war
- 1871-78, moved to Argenteuil, sometimes lived in his boat studio
- 1883, settled in Giverny
- renowned as a landscape painter
Claude Monet - Women in the Garden
- painted totally outdoor to capture the bright sunlight on the dresses, the ground and the trees, and other objects
- impressionists: painters of light
Claude Monet - La Grenouillere (frog Pond)
- western suburb of paris, a meeting place of sportsmen and strollers along river seine in Bougival
- developed the characteristic coarse, broken brushstrokes of impressionism: let human eye do the colour-mixing
- technique: thick, flat colour patches (e.g. white, blue, ochre, brown) are juxtaposed to a capture the movement of the water surface
- theme: sunlight, water movement
- purpose: capture the fleeting and floating light effect on objects
- impressionists: painters of water surface
Auguste Renoir - La Grenouillere
- was a neighbour of Monet in Bougival, painted often together
- Renoir’s emphasis is more on human figures and activities: an enclosed composition with the focus on the human group in the center
Claude Monet - The thames below westminster
- developed atmospheric landscape under the influence of constable, turner and whistler during his stay in london from 1870-71
- monet enriched his themes to paint atmospheric elements which affect the perception of the human eye
- impressionists: painters of the air
James McNeill - Nocturne in Blue and Gold
- American painter active in Paris and London
- compared painting to music
- paintings: harmonious arrangement of shapes and colours
- achieving atmospheric effects through abstraction of form and colour
- composition influenced by japanese woodcut prints
Claude Monet - Impression: sunrise
- a harbour in Le Havre seen through the morning mists
- criticized as “worse than a wall-paper design in the embryonic stage”
- inspired by Turner’s indistinct images of water landscapes - use of muddy colour in the background; unlike Turner’s violent romantic landscapes, Monet’s are calm and tranquil
Claude Monet - Gare Saint-Lazare (The Auteuil line)
- a study of the atmospheric effect of vapour produced by the steam under the glass roof of the railway station
Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral, the Portal and St. Romain tower in bad weather (harmony in grey)
- a more challenging subject than the earlier series - fretting of the sculpted surface produces more profound effects of shadow, esp in recesses of the pointed-arched portal
- heavy, thick paint was applied wet-on-wet to build up the coarse texture of the surface
Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral, the Portal and St. Romain tower in bad weather (harmony in blue and gold)
- texture thus created imitates and exaggerates the light changes on the surface
- within 3 years, monet produced around 30 views of the same facade during different times of a day and different seasons of a year
Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral, the Portal and St. Romain tower in bad weather (harmony in blue and gold)
- texture thus created imitates and exaggerates the light changes on the surface
- within 3 years, monet produced around 30 views of the same facade during different times of a day and different seasons of a year
Claude Monet - Japanese footbridge
- from 1899 to 1926, worked almost exclusively on the pond and water lilies; he produced some 250 pieces on this theme
- settled in Giverny in 1883
- produced series of paintings with simplified subjects for exclusive, detailed study of light effect
- japanese bridge is a recurrent motif in the last phase of Monet’s art
5.refer to Ukiyo-e woodcut prints by Utagawa Hiroshige
— man on horseback crossing a bridge
— japonisme - influence of japanese art on late 19th century western art
Claude Monet - Les Nympheas (Water Lilies: Morning)
- last phase of his water lilies series - extremely large in scale, covering walls of a whole exhibition hall, absence of any reference of physical reality, complete abstraction of colour
Pierre Auguste Renoir
- born in Limoges
- moved to paris
- worked as a porcelain painter and then a textile painter
- entered Marc Gabriel Gleyre’s studio
- used thick paint, bright colour and painted in open air with other impressionists
- imitated Delacroix’s themes of oriental women
- travelled to africa and italy
- renowned as a painter of beautiful women and lovely children, joyful situations, dancing parties - pay homage to Rococo painters