Impressionism is a trend in painting that originated in France in the 19th-20th centuries, which is an artistic attempt to capture any moment of life in all its variability and mobility. Impressionist paintings are like a qualitatively washed-out photograph, reviving in fantasy the continuation of the story seen. In this article, we take a look at 10 of the world's most famous impressionists. Fortunately, there are more than ten, twenty or even a hundred talented artists, so let's focus on those names that you need to know for sure.
In order not to offend either the artists or their admirers, the list is given in Russian alphabetical order.
1. Alfred Sisley
This French painter of English origin is considered the most famous landscape painter of the second half of the 19th century. There are more than 900 paintings in his collection, of which the most famous are “Country Alley”, “Frost in Louveciennes”, “Bridge in Argenteuil”, “Early Snow in Louveciennes”, “Lawns in Spring”, and many others.
2. Van Gogh
Known to the whole world for the sad story about his ear (by the way, he did not cut off the whole ear, but only the lobe), Wang Gon became popular only after his death. And in his life he was able to sell a single painting, 4 months before his death. It is said that he was both an entrepreneur and a priest, but often ended up in psychiatric hospitals due to depression, so all the rebelliousness of his existence resulted in legendary works.
3. Camille Pissarro
Pissarro was born on the island of St. Thomas, in a family of bourgeois Jews, and was one of the few impressionists whose parents encouraged his hobby and soon sent him to Paris to study. Most of all, the artist liked nature, and he depicted it in all colors, and more precisely, Pissarro had a special talent for choosing the softness of colors, compatibility, after which air seemed to appear in the pictures.
4. Claude Monet
From childhood, the boy decided that he would become an artist, despite the prohibitions of the family. Having moved to Paris on his own, Claude Monet plunged into the gray everyday life of a hard life: two years in the service in the armed forces in Algeria, litigation with creditors due to poverty, illness. However, one gets the feeling that the difficulties did not oppress, but rather inspired the artist to create such vivid paintings as “Impression, Sunrise”, “Parliament Building in London”, “Bridge to Europe”, “Autumn in Argenteuil”, “On the Shore Trouville, and many others.
5. Konstantin Korovin
It is nice to know that among the French, the parents of impressionism, one can proudly place our compatriot Konstantin Korovin. Passionate love for nature helped him intuitively give unimaginable liveliness to a static picture, thanks to the combination of suitable colors, width of strokes, choice of theme. It is impossible to pass by his paintings "Pier in Gurzuf", "Fish, Wine and Fruit", "Autumn Landscape", "Moonlight Night. Winter” and a series of his works dedicated to Paris.
6. Paul Gauguin
Until the age of 26, Paul Gauguin did not even think about painting. He was an entrepreneur and had a large family. However, when I first saw the paintings of Camille Pissarro, I decided that I would certainly begin to paint. Over time, the artist's style has changed, but the most famous impressionistic paintings are Garden in the Snow, By the Cliff, On the Beach in Dieppe, Nude, Palms in Martinique and others.
7. Paul Cezanne
Cezanne, unlike most of his colleagues, became famous during his lifetime. He managed to organize his own exhibition and gain considerable income from it. People knew a lot about his paintings - he, like no one else, learned to combine the play of light and shadow, made a loud emphasis on regular and irregular geometric shapes, the severity of the themes of his paintings were in harmony with romance.
8. Pierre Auguste Renoir
Until the age of 20, Renoir worked as a fan decorator for his older brother, and only then he moved to Paris, where he met Monet, Basil and Sisley. This acquaintance helped him in the future to take the road of impressionism and become famous on it. Renoir is known as the author of a sentimental portrait, among his most outstanding works are “On the Terrace”, “Walk”, “Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary”, “The Lodge”, “Alfred Sisley and his Wife”, “On the Swing”, “The Frog” and a lot others.
9. Edgar Degas
If you haven't heard anything about the "Blue Dancers", "Ballet Rehearsals", "Ballet School" and "Absinthe" - hurry up to learn more about the work of Edgar Degas. The selection of original colors, unique themes for paintings, the feeling of movement of the picture - all this and much more made Degas one of the most famous artists in the world.
10. Edouard Manet
Do not confuse Manet with Monet - these are two different people who worked at the same time and in the same artistic direction. Manet was always attracted by everyday scenes, unusual appearances and types, as if by chance "caught" moments, subsequently captured for centuries. Among the famous paintings of Manet: "Olympia", "Breakfast on the Grass", "Bar at the Folies Bergère", "Flutist", "Nana" and others.
If you have even the slightest opportunity to see the paintings of these masters live, you will fall in love with impressionism forever!
There is an opinion that painting in impressionism occupies not such an important place. But impressionism in painting is the opposite. The statement is very paradoxical and contradictory. But this is only at first, superficial glance.
Perhaps, that for all the millennia of existence in the arsenal of mankind of artistic fine art, nothing more new, revolutionary has appeared. Impressionism is in any modern art canvas. It can be clearly seen both in the frames of the film of the famous master, and among the gloss of a ladies' magazine. He penetrated music and books. But once upon a time everything was different.
Origins of Impressionism
In 1901, in France, in the Combarel cave, rock paintings were accidentally discovered, the youngest of which was 15,000 years old. And it was the first impressionism in painting. Because the primitive artist did not set out to read morality to the viewer. He simply painted the life that surrounded him.
And then this method was forgotten for many, many years. Mankind has invented others And the transfer of emotions by the visual method has ceased to be topical for him.
In some ways, the ancient Romans were close to impressionism. But part of their efforts were covered in ashes. And where Vesuvius did not reach, the barbarians came.
Painting was preserved, but began to illustrate texts, messages, messages, knowledge. She ceased to be a feeling. It has become a parable, an explanation, a story. Look at the tapestry from Bayeux. He is wonderful and priceless. But this is not a picture. This is seventy meters of linen comics.
Painting in impressionism: the beginning
Slowly and majestically developed painting in the world for thousands of years. New colors and techniques appeared. Artists learned the importance of perspective and the power of a colorful hand-drawn message on the human mind. Painting became an academic science and acquired all the features of monumental art. She became clumsy, prim and moderately pretentious. At the same time, refined and unshakable, like a canonical religious postulate.
Religious parables, literature, staged genre scenes served as the source of plots for the paintings. The strokes were small and inconspicuous. Glazing was introduced into the rank of dogma. And the art of drawing in the foreseeable future promised to ossify like a primeval forest.
Life was changing, technology was rapidly developing, and only artists continued to churn out prim portraits and smoothed sketches of country parks. This state of affairs did not suit everyone. But the inertia of the consciousness of society was overcome with difficulty at all times.
However, the 19th century was already in the yard, having long passed its second half. Social processes that used to take centuries now took place before the eyes of one generation. Industry, medicine, economics, literature, and society itself developed rapidly. It was then that painting showed itself in impressionism.
Happy birthday! Impressionism in painting: paintings
Impressionism in painting, like paintings, has an exact dating of its birth - 1863. And his birth was not without curiosities.
The center of world art then, of course, was Paris. It annually hosted large Parisian salons - world exhibitions and sales of paintings. The jury, which selected works for the salons, was mired in petty internal intrigues, useless squabbles and stubbornly oriented towards the senile tastes of the then academies. As a result, new, bright artists, whose talent did not correspond to ossified academic dogmas, did not get to the exhibition in the salon. During the selection of participants in the exhibition in 1863, over 60% of applications were rejected. These are thousands of painters. A scandal was brewing.
Emperor-gallery
And the scandal erupted. The inability to exhibit deprived a huge number of artists of their livelihood and access to the general public. Among them are the names now known to the whole world: Monet and Manet, Renoir and Pizarro.
It is clear that this did not suit them. And there was a big buzz in the press. It got to the point that on April 22, 1863, Napoleon III visited the Paris Salon and, in addition to the exposition, purposefully examined some of the rejected works. And I did not find anything reprehensible in them. And even made this statement in the press. That is why, in parallel with the great Paris Salon, an alternative exhibition of paintings with works rejected by the salon jury was opened. It went down in history under the name "Exhibition of Outcasts".
So, April 22, 1863 can be considered the birthday of all modern art. Art that has become independent of literature, music and religion. Moreover, painting itself began to dictate its terms to writers and composers, for the first time getting rid of subordinate roles.
Representatives of impressionism
When we talk about impressionism, we first of all mean impressionism in painting. Its representatives are numerous and multifaceted. Suffice it to name the most famous: Degas, Renouan, Pizarro, Cezanne, Morisot, Lepic, Legros, Gauguin, Renoir, Thilo, Forain and many, many others. For the first time, the Impressionists set the task of capturing not just a static picture from life, but snatching a feeling, an emotion, an inner experience. It was an instant cut, a high-speed photograph of the inner world, the emotional world.
Hence the new contrasts and colors, hitherto not used in painting. Hence the large, bold strokes and the constant search for new forms. There is no former clarity and slickness. The picture is blurry and fleeting, like a person's mood. This is not history. These are feelings that are visible to the eye. Look at them. They are all a little cut off in mid-sentence, a little fleeting. These are not paintings. These are sketches brought to ingenious perfection.
The emergence of post-impressionism
It was the desire to bring a feeling to the fore, and not a frozen temporal fragment, that was revolutionary and innovative for that time. And then there was only one step left to post-impressionism - a trend of art that brought to the fore not emotion, but patterns. More precisely, the transfer by the artist of his inner, personal reality. This is an attempt to tell not about the outside world, but about the inner one, through the way the artist sees the world. perception.
Impressionism and post-impressionism in painting are very close. And the division itself is very conditional. Both currents are close in time, and the authors themselves, often the same, as a rule, moved from one style to another quite freely.
And yet. Look at the work of the Impressionists. Slightly unnatural colors. A world familiar to us, but at the same time a little fictional. This is how the artist saw it. He does not give us a nature contemporary to him. He just bares his soul a little for us. The soul of Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Denis, Gauguin and Seurat.
Russian impressionism
The experience of impressionism, which captured the whole world, did not leave Russia aside. Meanwhile, in our country, accustomed to a more measured life, not understanding the bustle and aspirations of Paris, impressionism could not get rid of academicism. He is like a bird that took off on takeoff, but froze halfway into the sky.
Impressionism in Russian painting did not receive the dynamism of the French brush. On the other hand, he acquired a dressed up semantic dominant, which made him a bright, somewhat isolated phenomenon in world art.
Impressionism is a feeling expressed in the form of a painting. He does not educate, does not demand. He claims.
Impressionism served as the starting point for Art Nouveau and expressionism, constructivism and avant-garde. All modern art, in fact, began its report on April 20, 1863. Impressionist painting is an art born in Paris.
European art of the late 19th century was enriched by the emergence of modernist art. Later, its influence extended to music and literature. It was called "impressionism" because it was based on the subtlest impressions of the artist, images and moods.
Origins and history of occurrence
Several young artists formed a group in the second half of the 19th century. They had a common goal and coincided interests. The main thing for this company was to work in nature, without the walls of the workshop and various restraining factors. In their paintings, they sought to convey all the sensuality, the impression of the play of light and shadow. Landscapes and portraits reflected the unity of the soul with the universe, with the surrounding world. Their paintings are true poetry of colors.
In 1874 there was an exhibition of this group of artists. Landscape by Claude Monet “Impression. Sunrise” caught the eye of the critic, who in his review for the first time called these creators impressionists (from the French impression - “impression”).
The prerequisites for the birth of the impressionism style, the paintings of whose representatives will soon find incredible success, were the works of the Renaissance. The work of the Spaniards Velazquez, El Greco, the English Turner, Constable unconditionally influenced the French, who were the founders of impressionism.
Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Sisley, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir and others became prominent representatives of the style in France.
The philosophy of impressionism in painting
The artists who painted in this style did not set themselves the task of drawing public attention to troubles. In their works, one cannot find plots on the topic of the day, one cannot receive moralizing or notice human contradictions.
Paintings in the style of impressionism are aimed at conveying a momentary mood, developing color schemes of a mysterious nature. In the works there is only a place for a positive beginning, gloom bypassed the Impressionists.
In fact, the Impressionists did not bother to think through the plot and details. The main factor was not what to draw, but how to depict and convey your mood.
Painting technique
There is a colossal difference between the academic style of drawing and the technique of the Impressionists. They simply abandoned many methods, some were changed beyond recognition. Here are the innovations they made:
- Abandoned contour. It was replaced with strokes - small and contrasting.
- We stopped using palettes for We selected colors that complement each other and do not require merging to obtain a certain effect. For example, yellow is purple.
- Stop painting in black.
- Completely abandoned work in the workshops. They wrote exclusively on nature, so that it would be easier to capture a moment, an image, a feeling.
- Only paints with good opacity were used.
- Don't wait for the next layer to dry. Fresh smears were applied immediately.
- They created cycles of works to follow the changes in light and shadow. For example, "Haystacks" by Claude Monet.
Of course, not all artists performed exactly the features of the impressionism style. Paintings by Edouard Manet, for example, never participated in joint exhibitions, and he himself positioned himself as a separate artist. Edgar Degas worked only in workshops, but this did not harm the quality of his works.
Representatives of French Impressionism
The first exhibition of Impressionist works is dated 1874. After 12 years, their last exposition took place. The first work in this style can be called “Breakfast on the Grass” by E. Manet. This picture was presented in the Salon of the Rejected. It was met with hostility, because it was very different from the academic canons. That is why Manet becomes a figure around which a circle of followers of this stylistic direction gathers.
Unfortunately, contemporaries did not appreciate such a style as impressionism. Paintings and artists existed in disagreement with official art.
Gradually, Claude Monet comes to the fore in the team of painters, who later becomes their leader and the main ideologist of impressionism.
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
The work of this artist can be described as a hymn to impressionism. It was he who was the first to refuse to use black in his paintings, arguing that even shadows and night have other tones.
The world in Monet's paintings is vague outlines, voluminous strokes, looking at which you can feel the whole spectrum of the play of the colors of day and night, the seasons, the harmony of the sublunar world. Only a moment that was snatched from the flow of life, in the understanding of Monet, is impressionism. His paintings seem to have no materiality, they are all saturated with rays of light and air currents.
Claude Monet created amazing works: "Station Saint-Lazare", "Rouen Cathedral", the cycle "Charing Cross Bridge" and many others.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Renoir's creations give the impression of extraordinary lightness, airiness, ethereality. The plot was born as if by accident, but it is known that the artist carefully thought through all the stages of his work and worked from morning to night.
A distinctive feature of the work of O. Renoir is the use of glazing, which is possible only when writing Impressionism in the artist's works is manifested in every stroke. He perceives a person as a particle of nature itself, which is why there are so many paintings with nudes.
Renoir's favorite pastime was the image of a woman in all her attractive and attractive beauty. Portraits occupy a special place in the creative life of the artist. “Umbrellas”, “Girl with a Fan”, “Breakfast of the Rowers” are just a small part of the amazing collection of paintings by Auguste Renoir.
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Seurat associated the process of creating paintings with the scientific substantiation of color theory. The light-air environment was drawn on the basis of the dependence of the main and additional tones.
Despite the fact that J. Seurat is a representative of the final stage of Impressionism, and his technique is in many respects different from the founders, he in the same way creates an illusory representation of the objective form with the help of strokes, which can be viewed and seen only at a distance.
Masterpieces of creativity can be called the painting "Sunday", "Cancan", "Models".
Representatives of Russian impressionism
Russian impressionism arose almost spontaneously, mixing many phenomena and methods. However, the basis, like the French, was a full-scale vision of the process.
In Russian impressionism, although the features of French were preserved, the features of the national nature and state of mind made significant changes. For example, the vision of snow or northern landscapes was expressed using an unusual technique.
In Russia, few artists worked in the style of impressionism, their paintings attract the eye to this day.
The impressionistic period can be distinguished in the work of Valentin Serov. His "Girl with Peaches" is the clearest example and standard of this style in Russia.
The paintings conquer with their freshness and consonance of pure colors. The main theme of this artist's work is the image of a person in nature. "Northern Idyll", "In the Boat", "Fyodor Chaliapin" are bright milestones in the activity of K. Korovin.
Impressionism in modern times
Currently, this direction in art has received a new life. In this style, several artists paint their paintings. Modern impressionism exists in Russia (André Cohn), in France (Laurent Parcelier), in America (Diana Leonard).
Andre Kohn is the most prominent representative of the new impressionism. His oil paintings are striking in their simplicity. The artist sees beauty in ordinary things. The Creator interprets many objects through the prism of movement.
The watercolor works of Laurent Parcelier are known all over the world. His series of works "Strange World" was released in the form of postcards. Gorgeous, vibrant and sensual, they are breathtaking.
As in the 19th century, plein air painting remains for artists at the moment. Thanks to her, impressionism will live forever. artists continue to inspire, impress and inspire.
Impressionism (French impressionnisme, from impression - impression), a trend in the art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th century, whose masters, fixing their fleeting impressions, sought to most naturally and impartially capture the real world in its mobility and variability. Impressionism originated in French painting in the late 1860s. Edouard Manet (who was not formally a member of the Impressionist group), Degas, Renoir, Monet brought freshness and immediacy to the perception of life in fine art.
French artists turned to the image of instant situations, snatched from the stream of reality, the spiritual life of a person, the image of strong passions, the spiritualization of nature, interest in the national past, the desire for synthetic forms of art are combined with the motives of world sorrow, the desire to explore and recreate the "shadow", " night" side of the human soul, with the famous "romantic irony" that allowed the romantics to boldly compare and equalize the high and the low, the tragic and the comic, the real and the fantastic. Impressionist artists used the fragmentary realities of situations, used seemingly unbalanced compositional constructions, unexpected angles, points of view, cuts of figures.
In the 1870–1880s, the landscape of French impressionism was formed: C. Monet, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley developed a consistent plein air system, created in their paintings a feeling of sparkling sunlight, richness of colors of nature, dissolution of forms in the vibration of light and air. The name of the direction comes from the name of the painting by Claude Monet "Impression. Rising Sun" ("Impression. Soleil levant"; exhibited in 1874, now at the Musée Marmottan, Paris). The decomposition of complex colors into pure components, which were superimposed on the canvas in separate strokes, colored shadows, reflections and valery gave rise to an unprecedentedly light, quivering impressionist painting.
Certain aspects and techniques of this trend in painting were used by painters from Germany (M. Lieberman, L. Corinth), the USA (J. Whistler), Sweden (A.L. Zorn), Russia (K.A. Korovin, I.E. Grabar ) and many other national art schools. The concept of impressionism is also applied to the sculpture of the 1880s-1910s, which has some impressionistic features - the desire to convey instantaneous movement, fluidity and softness of form, plastic sketchiness (works by O. Rodin, bronze statuettes by Degas, etc.). Impressionism in the visual arts influenced the development of expressive means of contemporary literature, music, and theater. In interaction and in controversy with the pictorial system of this style, neo-impressionism and post-impressionism emerged in the artistic culture of France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
neo-impressionism(French neo-impressionnisme) - a trend in painting that arose in France around 1885, when its main masters, J. Seurat and P. Signac, developed a new painting technique of divisionism. The French neo-impressionists and their followers (T. van Reiselberg in Belgium, G. Segantini in Italy and others), developing the tendencies of late impressionism, sought to apply modern discoveries in the field of optics to art, giving a methodical character to the methods of decomposing tones into pure colors; at the same time, they overcame the randomness, fragmentation of the impressionistic composition, resorted to flat-decorative solutions in their landscapes and multi-figured panel paintings.
post-impressionism(from lat. post - after and impressionism) - the collective name of the main trends in French painting of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Since the mid-1880s, post-impressionist masters have been looking for new expressive means that can overcome the empiricism of artistic thinking and allow them to move from the impressionistic fixation of individual moments of life to the embodiment of its long-term states, material and spiritual constants. The period of post-impressionism is characterized by the active interaction of individual trends and individual creative systems. Post-impressionism usually ranks as the work of neo-impressionist masters, the Nabis group, as well as V. van Gogh, P. Cezanne, P. Gauguin.
Reference and biographical data of the Small Bay Planet Art Gallery are prepared on the basis of materials from the History of Foreign Art (edited by M.T. Kuzmina, N.L. Maltseva), the Artistic Encyclopedia of Foreign Classical Art, and the Great Russian Encyclopedia.
The direction of I. developed in France in the last. third of the 19th century - early 20th century and went through 3 steps:
1860-70s - early I.
1874-80s - mature I.
90s of the 19th century - late I.
The name of the direction I. came from the name of the painting by C. Monet “Impression. The Rising Sun, written in 1872.
Origins: the work of the "small" Dutch (Vermeer), E. Delacroix, G. Courbet, F. Millet, K. Corot, the artists of the Barbizon school - they all tried to capture the subtlest moods of nature, atmosphere, performing small sketches in nature.
Japanese engraving, an exhibition of which was held in Paris in 1867, where for the first time whole series of images of the same object were shown at different times of the year, day, etc. (“100 Views of Mount Fuji”, Tokaido Station, etc.)
Aesthetic principles AND.:
Rejection of the conventions of classicism; rejection of historical, biblical, mythological subjects, mandatory for classicism;
Work in the open air (except for E. Degas);
Transfer of an instant impression, which includes observation and study of the surrounding reality in various manifestations;
Impressionist painters expressed in paintings not only what they see(as in realism) but how they see(subjective principle);
The Impressionists, as artists of the city, tried to capture it in all its diversity, dynamics, speed, diversity of clothes, advertisements, movement (C. Monet “Boulevard des Capucines in Paris”;
Impressionist painting is characterized by democratic motives, which affirmed the beauty of everyday life; plots - this is a modern city, with its entertainment: cafes, theaters, restaurants, circuses (E. Manet, O. Renoir, E. Degas). It is important to note the poetic nature of the motives of the image;
New forms of painting: framing, sketching, etude, small sizes of works in order to emphasize the fleetingness of the impression, violating the integrity of objects;
The plot of the Impressionist paintings was not basic and typical, as in the realistic direction of the 19th century, but random (not a performance, a rehearsal - E. Degas: a ballet series);
- "mixture of genres": landscape, everyday genre, portrait and still life (E. Manet - "Bar in the Folies-Bergere";
Instantaneous image of the same object at different times of the year, day (C. Monet - “Haystacks”, “Poplars”, a series of images of the Rouen Cathedral, water lilies, etc.)
The creation of a new pictorial system to preserve the freshness of the instantaneous impression: the decomposition of complex tones into pure colors - separate strokes of pure color that blended in the eye of the viewer with a bright color range. The painting of the Impressionists is a variety of commas-strokes, which gives the paint layer quivering and relief;
The special role of water in its image: water as a mirror, a vibrating color medium (C. Monet "Rocks in Belle-Ile").
From 1874 to 1886, the Impressionists held 8 exhibitions; after 1886, Impressionism begins to decompose as a holistic trend into neo-impressionism and post-impressionism.
Representatives of French impressionism: Edouard Manet, Claude Monet - the founder of I., Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro.
Russian impressionism is characterized:
A more accelerated development of impressionism in its "pure form", because. this trend in Russian painting appears in the late 80s of the 19th century;
Great prolongation in time (I. appears as a stylistic coloring in the works of major Russian artists: V. Serov, K. Korovin)
Great contemplation and lyricism, "rural version" (compared to the "urban" French): I. Grabar - "February Blue", "March Snow", "September Snow";
Depiction of purely Russian themes (V. Serov, I. Grabar);
Greater interest in a person (V. Serov "Girl illuminated by the sun" "Girl with peaches";
Less dynamization of perception;
Romantic coloration.
