Impressionism is one of the most famous movements of French painting, if not the most famous. And it originated in the late 60s and early 70s of the 19th century and largely influenced the further development of art of that time.

Impressionism in painting

The name itself " impressionism" was coined by a French art critic named Louis Leroy after attending the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where he criticized Claude Monet's painting Impression: The Rising Sun ("impression" translated into French as "impression").

Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille are the main representatives of impressionism.

Impressionism in painting is characterized by fast, spontaneous and free strokes. The guiding principle was a realistic depiction of the light-air environment.

The impressionists sought to capture fleeting moments on canvas. If at this very moment an object appears in an unnatural color, due to a certain angle of incidence of light or its reflection, then the artist depicts it that way: for example, if the sun paints the surface of a pond pink, then it will be painted in pink.

Features of impressionism

Speaking about the main features of impressionism, it is necessary to name the following:

• immediate and optically accurate image of a fleeting moment;
• doing all the work outdoors - no more preparatory sketches and finishing work in the studio;

• using pure color on the canvas, without pre-mixing on the palette;
• the use of splashes of bright paint, strokes of varying sizes and degrees of sweep, which visually add up to one picture only when viewed from a distance.

Russian impressionism

The standard portrait in this style is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Russian painting - “Girl with Peaches” by Alexander Serov, for whom impressionism, however, became just a period of passion. Russian impressionism also includes works by Konstantin Korovin, Abram Arkhipov, Philip Malyavin, Igor Grabar and other artists written at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

This affiliation is rather conditional, since Russian and classical French impressionism have their own specifics. Russian impressionism was closer to the materiality, objectivity of works, and gravitated towards artistic meaning, while French impressionism, as mentioned above, simply sought to depict moments of life, without unnecessary philosophy.

In fact, Russian impressionism adopted from the French only the external side of the style, the techniques of its painting, but never assimilated the very pictorial thinking invested in impressionism.

Modern impressionism continues the traditions of classical French impressionism. In modern painting of the 21st century, many artists work in this direction, for example, Laurent Parselier, Karen Tarleton, Diana Leonard and others.

Masterpieces in the style of impressionism

"Terrace at Sainte-Adresse" (1867), Claude Monet

This painting can be called Monet's first masterpiece. It is still the most popular painting of early impressionism. The artist’s favorite theme is also present here - flowers and the sea. The canvas depicts several people relaxing on the terrace on a sunny day. Relatives of Monet himself are depicted on chairs with their backs to the audience.

The whole picture is flooded with bright sunlight. Clear boundaries between land, sky and sea are separated, organizing the composition vertically with the help of two flagpoles, but the composition does not have a clear center. The colors of the flags are combined with the surrounding nature, emphasizing the diversity and richness of colors.

"Bal at the Moulin de la Galette" (1876), Pierre Auguste Renoir

This painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon in 19th-century Paris at the Moulin de la Galette, a café with an outdoor dance floor whose name corresponds to the name of the mill that is located nearby and is the symbol of Montmartre. Renoir's house was located next to this cafe; he often attended Sunday afternoon dances and enjoyed watching happy couples.

Renoir demonstrates true talent and combines the art of group portraiture, still life and landscape painting in one painting. The use of light in this composition and the smoothness of the brushstrokes best represent the style to the general viewer. impressionism. This painting became one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction.

"Boulevard Montmartre at Night" (1897), Camille Pissarro

Although Pissarro is famous for his paintings of rural life, he also painted a large number of beautiful urban scenes in 19th century Paris. He loved to paint the city because of the play of light during the day and evening, because of the roads illuminated by both sunlight and street lamps.

In 1897, he rented a room on the Boulevard Montmartre and depicted him at different times of the day, and this work was the only work in the series captured after night had fallen. The canvas is filled with deep blue color and bright yellow spots of city lights. In all the paintings of the “boulevard” cycle, the main core of the composition is the road stretching into the distance.

The painting is now in the National Gallery in London, but during Pissarro’s lifetime it was never exhibited anywhere.

You can watch a video about the history and conditions of creativity of the main representatives of impressionism here:

Introduction

Impressionism as a phenomenon in art

Impressionism in painting

Impressionist artists

3.1 Claude Monet

3.2 Edgar Degas

3.3 Alfred Sisley

3.4 Camille Pissarro

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

This essay is dedicated to impressionism in art - painting.

Impressionism is one of the brightest and most important phenomena in European art, which largely determined the entire development of modern art. Currently, the works of the Impressionists, who were not recognized in their time, are highly valued and their artistic merits are undeniable. The relevance of the chosen topic is explained by the need for every modern person to understand art styles and know the main milestones of its development.

I chose this topic because impressionism was a kind of revolution in art, changing the idea of ​​works of art as holistic, monumental things. Impressionism brought to the fore the individuality of the creator, his own vision of the world, relegating political and religious subjects and academic laws to the background. It is interesting that emotions and impressions, and not plot and morality, played the main role in the works of the Impressionists.

Impressionism (fr. impressionnisme, from impression- impression) - a movement in the art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which originated in France and then spread throughout the world, whose representatives sought to most naturally and impartially capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey their fleeting impressions. Usually the term “impressionism” refers to a movement in painting, although its ideas have also found their embodiment in literature and music.

The term “impressionism” arose from the light hand of the critic of the magazine “Le Charivari” Louis Leroy, who entitled his feuilleton about the Salon of Rejects “Exhibition of the Impressionists”, taking as a basis the title of this painting by Claude Monet.

Auguste Renoir Paddling pool, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Origins

During the Renaissance, painters of the Venetian school tried to convey living reality using bright colors and intermediate tones. The Spaniards took advantage of their experiences, most clearly expressed in such artists as El Greco, Velazquez and Goya, whose work subsequently had a serious influence on Manet and Renoir.

At the same time, Rubens made the shadows on his canvases colored, using transparent intermediate shades. As Delacroix observed, Rubens depicted light with subtle, refined tones, and shadows with warmer, richer colors, conveying the effect of chiaroscuro. Rubens did not use black, which would later become one of the main principles of impressionist painting.

Edouard Manet was influenced by the Dutch artist Frans Hals, who painted with sharp strokes and loved the contrast of bright colors and black.

The transition of painting to impressionism was also prepared by English painters. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Claude Monet, Sisley and Pissarro went to London to study the great landscape painters Constable, Bonington and Turner. As for the latter, already in his later works it is noticeable how the connection with the real image of the world disappears and the withdrawal into the individual transmission of impressions.

Eugene Delacroix had a strong influence, he already distinguished between local color and color acquired under the influence of light, his watercolors painted in North Africa in 1832 or in Etretat in 1835, and especially the painting “The Sea at Dieppe” (1835) allow us to talk about him as a predecessor of the Impressionists.

The final element that influenced the innovators was Japanese art. Since 1854, thanks to exhibitions held in Paris, young artists have discovered masters of Japanese printmaking such as Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige. A special, hitherto unknown in European fine art, arrangement of an image on a sheet of paper - an offset composition or a tilted composition, a schematic representation of form, a penchant for artistic synthesis - won the favor of the impressionists and their followers.

Story

Edgar Degas, Blue dancers, 1897, Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin, Moscow

The beginning of the search for impressionists dates back to the 1860s, when young artists were no longer satisfied with the means and goals of academicism, as a result of which each of them independently looked for other ways to develop their style. In 1863, Edouard Manet exhibited the painting “Lunch on the Grass” at the Salon of the Rejected and actively spoke at meetings of poets and artists in the Guerbois cafe, which were attended by all the future founders of the new movement, thanks to which he became the main defender of modern art.

In 1864, Eugene Boudin invited Monet to Honfleur, where he spent the entire autumn watching his teacher paint studies in pastels and watercolors, and his friend Yonkind applying paint to his works with vibrating strokes. It was here that they taught him to work en plein air and paint in light colors.

In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, Monet and Pissarro went to London, where they became acquainted with the work of the predecessor of impressionism, William Turner.

Claude Monet. Impression. Sunrise. 1872, Marmottan-Monet Museum, Paris.

Origin of the name

The first important exhibition of the Impressionists took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the studio of the photographer Nadar. 30 artists were presented there, with a total of 165 works. Monet's canvas - “Impression. Rising Sun" ( Impression, soleil levant), now in the Marmottin Museum, Paris, written in 1872, gave birth to the term "Impressionism": the little-known journalist Louis Leroy, in his article in the magazine "Le Charivari", called the group "Impressionists" to express his disdain. Artists, out of defiance, accepted this epithet; later it took root, lost its original negative meaning and came into active use.

The name “impressionism” is quite meaningless, unlike the name “Barbizon School”, where at least there is an indication of the geographical location of the artistic group. There is even less clarity with some artists who were not formally included in the circle of the first impressionists, although their technical techniques and means are completely “impressionistic” Whistler, Edouard Manet, Eugene Boudin, etc.) In addition, the technical means of the impressionists were known long before the 19th century centuries and they were (partially, to a limited extent) used by Titian and Velasquez, without breaking with the dominant ideas of their era.

There was another article (by Emil Cardon) and another title - “Rebel Exhibition”, which was absolutely disapproving and condemning. It was precisely this that accurately reproduced the disapproving attitude of the bourgeois public and criticism towards artists (Impressionists), which had prevailed for years. The Impressionists were immediately accused of immorality, rebellious sentiments, and failure to be respectable. At the moment, this is surprising, because it is not clear what is immoral in the landscapes of Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, everyday scenes of Edgar Degas, still lifes of Monet and Renoir.

Decades have passed. And the new generation of artists will come to a real collapse of forms and impoverishment of content. Then both criticism and the public saw the condemned impressionists as realists, and a little later as classics of French art.

Impressionism as a phenomenon in art

Impressionism, one of the brightest and most interesting movements in French art of the last quarter of the 19th century, was born in a very complex environment, characterized by diversity and contrasts, which gave impetus to the emergence of many modern movements. Impressionism, despite its short duration, had a significant influence on the art of not only France, but also other countries: the USA, Germany (M. Lieberman), Belgium, Italy, England. In Russia, the influence of impressionism was experienced by K. Balmont, Andrei Bely, Stravinsky, K. Korovin (closest in his aesthetics to the impressionists), the early V. Serov, as well as I. Grabar. Impressionism was the last major artistic movement in France in the 19th century, drawing the line between modern and contemporary art.

According to M. Aplatov, “pure impressionism probably did not exist. Impressionism is not a doctrine, it could not have canonized forms...French impressionist artists have one or another of its features to varying degrees.” Usually the term “impressionism” refers to a movement in painting, although its ideas have found their embodiment in other forms of art, for example, in music.

Impressionism is, first of all, the art of observing reality, conveying or creating an impression that has reached unprecedented sophistication, an art in which the plot is not important. This is a new, subjective artistic reality. The Impressionists put forward their own principles of perception and display of the surrounding world. They erased the line between the main objects worthy of high art and secondary objects.

An important principle of impressionism was the avoidance of typicality. Immediacy and a casual look have entered art; it seems that the Impressionist paintings were painted by a simple passer-by walking along the boulevards and enjoying life. It was a revolution in vision.

The aesthetics of impressionism developed partly as an attempt to decisively free oneself from the conventions of classicist art, as well as from the persistent symbolism and profundity of late romantic painting, which suggested seeing encrypted meanings in everything that needed careful interpretation. Impressionism not only affirms the beauty of everyday reality, but also makes artistically significant the post-constant variability of the surrounding world, the naturalness of spontaneous, unpredictable, random impressions. Impressionists strive to capture its colorful atmosphere without detailing or interpreting it.

As an artistic movement, impressionism, particularly in painting, quickly exhausted its capabilities. Classical French impressionism was too narrow, and few remained faithful to its principles throughout their lives. In the process of development of the impressionistic method, the subjectivity of pictorial perception overcame objectivity and rose to an increasingly higher formal level, opening the way for all movements of post-impressionism, including the symbolism of Gauguin and the expressionism of Van Gogh. But, despite the narrow time frame - just two decades, impressionism brought art to a fundamentally different level, having a significant impact on everything: modern painting, music and literature, as well as cinema.

Impressionism introduced new themes; works of a mature style are distinguished by a bright and spontaneous vitality, the discovery of new artistic possibilities of color, the aestheticization of a new painting technique, and the very structure of the work. It is these features that emerged in impressionism that are further developed in neo-impressionism and post-impressionism. The influence of impressionism as an approach to reality or as a system of expressive techniques found its way into almost all art schools of the early 20th century; it became the starting point for the development of a number of directions, including abstractionism. Some principles of impressionism - the transmission of instantaneous movement, the fluidity of form - appeared to varying degrees in the sculpture of the 1910s, in E. Degas, Fr. Rodin, M. Golubkina. Artistic impressionism greatly enriched the means of expression in literature (P. Verlaine), music (C. Debussy), and theater.

2. Impressionism in painting

In the spring of 1874, a group of young painters, including Monet, Renoir, Pizarro, Sisley, Degas, Cezanne and Berthe Morisot, neglected the official Salon and staged their own exhibition, subsequently becoming the central figures of the new movement. It took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the studio of the photographer Nadar in Paris, on the Boulevard des Capucines. 30 artists were presented there, with a total of 165 works. Such an act in itself was revolutionary and broke with centuries-old foundations, but the paintings of these artists at first glance seemed even more hostile to tradition. It took years before these later recognized classics of painting were able to convince the public not only of their sincerity, but also of their talent. All these very different artists were united by a common struggle against conservatism and academicism in art. The Impressionists held eight exhibitions, the last in 1886.

It was at the first exhibition in 1874 in Paris that Claude Monet's painting of a sunrise appeared. It attracted everyone's attention primarily with its unusual title: “Impression. Sunrise". But the painting itself was unusual; it conveyed that almost elusive, changeable play of colors and light. It was the name of this painting - “Impression” - thanks to the ridicule of one of the journalists, that laid the foundation for a whole movement in painting called impressionism (from the French word “impression” - impression).

Trying to express their direct impressions of things as accurately as possible, the Impressionists created a new method of painting. Its essence was to convey the external impression of light, shadow, reflexes on the surface of objects with separate strokes of pure paint, which visually dissolved the form in the surrounding light-air environment.

Plausibility was sacrificed to personal perception - the impressionists could, depending on their vision, paint the sky green and the grass blue, the fruits in their still lifes were unrecognizable, human figures were vague and sketchy. What was important was not what was depicted, but “how” was important. The object became a reason for solving visual problems.

The creative method of impressionism is characterized by brevity and sketchiness. After all, only a short sketch made it possible to accurately record individual states of nature. What was previously allowed only in sketches has now become the main feature of the completed paintings. Impressionist artists tried with all their might to overcome the static nature of painting and to forever capture the beauty of a fleeting moment. They began to use asymmetrical compositions to better highlight the characters and objects that interested them. In certain techniques of impressionistic construction of composition and space, the influence of passion for one’s own age is noticeable - not antiquity as before, Japanese engravings (such masters as Katsushika Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro) and partly photography, its close-ups and new points of view.

The Impressionists also updated their color scheme; they abandoned dark, earthy paints and varnishes and applied pure, spectral colors to the canvas, almost without mixing them first on the palette. Conventional, “museum” blackness in their canvases gives way to a play of colored shadows.

Thanks to the invention of metal tubes of paint, ready-made and portable, which replaced the old paints made by hand from oil and powdered pigments, artists were able to leave their studios to work plein air. They worked very quickly, because the movement of the sun changed the lighting and color of the landscape. Sometimes they squeezed paint onto the canvas straight from the tube and produced pure, sparkling colors with a brushstroke effect. By placing a stroke of one paint next to another, they often left the surface of the paintings rough. To preserve the freshness and variety of natural colors in the picture, the Impressionists created a painting system that is distinguished by the decomposition of complex tones into pure colors and the interpenetration of separate strokes of pure color, as if mixing in the viewer’s eye, with colored shadows and perceived by the viewer according to the law of complementary colors.

Striving for maximum immediacy in conveying the surrounding world, the Impressionists, for the first time in the history of art, began to paint primarily in the open air and raised the importance of sketches from life, which almost replaced the traditional type of painting, carefully and slowly created in the studio. Due to the very method of working in the open air, the landscape, including the city landscape they discovered, occupied a very important place in the art of the Impressionists. The main theme for them was the quivering light, the air in which people and objects seemed to be immersed. In their paintings one could feel the wind, wet earth heated by the sun. They sought to show the amazing richness of color in nature.

Impressionism introduced new themes into art - daily city life, street landscapes and entertainment. Its thematic and plot range was very wide. In their landscapes, portraits, and multi-figure compositions, artists strive to preserve the impartiality, strength and freshness of the “first impression”, without going into individual details, where the world is an ever-changing phenomenon.

Impressionism is distinguished by its bright and immediate vitality. It is characterized by the individuality and aesthetic value of the paintings, their deliberate randomness and incompleteness. In general, the works of the Impressionists are distinguished by their cheerfulness and passion for the sensual beauty of the world.

Impressionism(French impressionnisme, from impression - impression) - a movement in art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which originated in France and then spread throughout the world, whose representatives sought to most naturally capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey their fleeting impressions .

1. Liberation from the traditions of realism (no mythological, biblical and historical paintings, only modern life).

2. Observation and study of the surrounding reality. Not what it sees, but how it sees from the position of the perceived “visual essence of things”

3. Daily life of a modern city. Psychology of a city dweller. Dynamics of life. Pace, rhythm of life.

4. “The effect of an extended moment”

5. Search for new forms. Small size works (studies, framing). Not typical, but random.

6. Seriality of paintings (Monet “Haystacks”)

7. The novelty of the painting system. Open pure color. Relief, a rich collection of reflexes, trepidation.

8. Mixing genres.

Edouard Manet - innovator. From dull dense tones to light painting. Fragmentation of compositions.

"Olympia"- relies on Titian, Giorgione, Goya. Victoria Muran posed. Venus is depicted as a modern cocotte. There is a black cat at my feet. A black woman presents a bouquet. The background is dark, the warm tone of the woman's body is like a pearl on the blue sheets. The volume is disrupted. There is no cut-off modeling.

"Breakfast on the Grass"- model and two artists + landscape + still life. Black frock coats form a contrast with the naked body.

"Flutist"- impression of the music.

"Bar Folies Bergere" - The girl is a bartender. The thrill of a glimpsed moment. The loneliness of a bustling city. The illusion of happiness. I put it on the entire canvas (inaccessible in my thoughts, but accessible to the bar’s clients). A full hall of visitors is an image of the world.

Claude Monet - abandoned the traditional sequence (underpainting, glazing, etc.) - ala prima

"Impression. Rising Sun" - fieria yellow, orange, green. The boat is a visual accent. An elusive, unfinished landscape, no contours. Variability of the light-air environment. Rays of light change vision.

"Breakfast on the Grass" - edge of the forest, impression of a picnic , dark green color scheme interspersed with brown and black. The foliage turns out wet. The woman’s clothes and tablecloth are illuminated, filled with air, light through the foliage.

"Boulevard des Capucines in Paris" - fragmentary. Cuts off two people who are looking at the boulevard from the balcony. A crowd of people is the life of the city. Half in the light from the setting sun, and half in the shadow of the building. No visual center, instant impression.

"Rocks at Belle-Ile» - a moving mass of water dominates (thick strokes). Rainbow hues applied energetically. Rocks are reflected in water, and water is reflected in rocks. Feeling the power of the elements, boiling green-blue water. Composition with a high horizon.

"Gare Saint-Lazare" - the interior of the station is shown, but more interested in the locomotive and steam, which is everywhere (fascination with fog, lilac haze).

Pierre Auguste Renoir- an artist of joy, known primarily as a master of secular portraiture, not devoid of sentimentality.

"Swing"- permeated with a warm color, youth is shown, the girl is impressed.

"Ball at the Moulin de la Gallette" - genre scene. Day. Young people, students, saleswomen, etc. At the tables under the acacia trees there is a platform for dancing. Light play (sunbeams on the backs).

"Portrait of Jeanne Samary" - flower women. Charming, feminine, graceful, touching, spontaneous actress. Deep eyes, light sunny smile.

"Portrait of Madame Charpentier with Children"- an elegant socialite woman in a black dress with a train and two girls in blue. Tapestries, a table, a dog, parquet flooring - everything speaks of the wealth of the family.

Edgar Degas– did not paint in the open air, the cult of line and drawing. Compositions diagonally (from bottom to top)); S-shaped, spiral figures + window from which lighting + lighting from spotlights. Oil, then bed.

"Ballet Girls", "Dancers"- invades the lives of ballerinas. Strokes connect drawing and painting. Constant rhythm of training.

"Blue Dancers"- no individuality - a single wreath of bodies. In one corner there is still light from the ramps, and in the other there is the shadow of the backstage. The moment is also for actresses and ordinary people. Expressive silhouettes, cornflower blue dresses. Fragmentation - the characters do not look at the viewer.

"Apsent" - a man and a woman are sitting in a cafe. Ash range. A man with a pipe looks in one direction, and a drunk woman with a distant look - aching loneliness.

Camille Pissarro - is interested in landscapes, including people and carts in them. Motif of a road with people walking. I loved spring and autumn.

"Entering the village of Voisin"- a dim, soft landscape, trees along the road - frame the entrance, their branches mix, dissolving in the sky. The horse walks slowly and calmly. Houses are not just architectural objects, but dwellings for people (warm nests).

"Opera Passage in Paris"(series) – a gray cloudy day. The roofs are lightly dusted with snow, the pavement is wet, the buildings are drowning in a shroud of snow, passers-by with umbrellas turn into shadows. The color of the humid air is enveloping. Lilac-blue, olive tones. Small strokes.

Alfred Sisley– sought to notice the beauty of nature, the epic tranquility inherent in the rural landscape.

"Frost in Louveciennes" - morning, fresh state, objects bathe in light (merger). No shadows (subtle nuances), yellow-orange colors. A calm corner, not a busy city. A feeling of purity, fragility, love for this place

Impressionism in Russia. develops at a later time and at an accelerated pace than in France

V.A. Serov – indifferent to academic drawing, wants to show the beauty of nature in color.

"Girl with Peaches"" - portrait of Verochka Mamontova. Everything is natural and relaxed, every detail is connected to one another. The beauty of a girl's face, the poetry of life's image, light-saturated colorful painting. The beauty and freshness of the sketch, two trends, two forces organically united, forming a single form of pictorial vision. Everything seems so simple and natural, but there is so much depth and integrity in this simplicity!! With utmost expressiveness, V. Serov conveyed the light pouring like a silver stream from the window and filling the room. The girl is sitting at the table and is not busy with anything, as if she really sat down for a moment, mechanically picked up a peach and holds it, looking at you simply and frankly. But this peace is only momentary, and through it the passion for high-spirited movement peeks through.

"Children"- shows the spiritual world of children (sons). The older one looks at the sunset, and the younger one faces the viewer. Different outlook on life.

"Mika Morozov"- sits in a chair, but rolls towards the viewer. Children's excitement is conveyed.

"Chorus Girl"- sketchiness. He paints with rich strokes of the brush, broad strokes in the foliage, strokes that are sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal and different in texture ⇒ dynamism, air and light. A combination of nature and a girl, freshness, spontaneity.

"Paris. Boulevard des Capucines" - motley kaleidoscope of colors. Artificial lighting - entertainment, decorative theatricality.

I.E.Grabar – volitional, emotional beginning.

« February azure"- I saw a birch tree from ground level and was shocked. The chimes of the rainbow are united by the azure sky. The birch is monumental (in the entire canvas).

"March Snow"- a girl carries buckets on a yoke, the shadow of a tree on the melted snow.

Impressionism opened up a new art - it is important how the artist sees, new forms and methods of presentation. They have a moment, we have a stretch of time; We have less dynamics, more romanticism.

Mane Breakfast on the grass Mane Olympia

Manet "Bar Folies Bergere" Manet Flutist"

Monet "Impression. Rising Sun Monet "Luncheon on the Grass" - "Boulevard des Capucines in Paris"

Monet "Rocks at Belle-Ile"» Monet "Gare Saint-Lazare"

Monet "Boulevard des Capucines in Paris"Renoir"Swing"

Renoir “Ball at the Moulin de la Gallette” Renoir “Portrait of Jeanne Samary”

Renoir "Portrait of Madame Charpentier with Children"

Degas "Blue Dancers" Degas "Apsent"

Pissarro –"Opera Passage in Paris"(series) Pissarro "Entering the village of Voisin»

Sisley “Frost in Louveciennes” Serov “Girl with Peaches”

Serov "Children" Serov "Mika Morozov"

Korovin “Chorus Girl” Korovin “Paris. Boulevard des Capucines"

Grabar “February Azure” Grabar “March Snow”

Everything has its origins somewhere in the past, including paintings that have changed with the times, and current trends are not clear to everyone. But everything new is well-forgotten old, and to understand modern painting, you don’t need to know the history of art from ancient times, you just need to remember the painting of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The middle of the 19th century was a time of change not only in history, but also in art. Everything that came before: classicism, romanticism, and especially academicism - movements limited to certain boundaries. In France in the 50-60s, trends in painting were set by the official Salon, but typical “Salon” art did not suit everyone, this explained the new directions that emerged. There was a revolutionary explosion in the painting of that time, which broke with centuries-old traditions and foundations. And one of the epicenters was Paris, where in the spring of 1874 young painters, among whom were Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Renoir and Cézanne, organized their own exhibition. The works presented there were completely different from those in the salon. The artists used a different method - reflexes, shadows and light were conveyed with pure paints, individual strokes, the shape of each object seemed to dissolve in an air-light environment. No other direction in painting knew such methods. These effects helped me express my impressions of ever-changing things, nature, and people as much as possible. One journalist called the group “impressionists,” thereby wanting to show his disdain for young artists. But they accepted this term, and it eventually took root and came into active use, losing its negative meaning. This is how impressionism appeared, unlike all other trends in painting of the 19th century.

At first, the reaction to the innovation was more than hostile. No one wanted to buy too bold and new paintings, and they were afraid, because all the critics did not take the impressionists seriously and laughed at them. Many said that the Impressionist artists wanted to achieve quick fame, they were dissatisfied with the sharp break with conservatism and academicism, as well as the unfinished and “sloppy” appearance of the work. But even hunger and poverty could not force the artists to abandon their beliefs, and they persisted until their paintings were finally recognized. But it took too long to wait for recognition; some impressionist artists were no longer alive.

As a result, the movement that originated in Paris in the 60s was of great importance for the development of world art in the 19th and 20th centuries. After all, future directions in painting were based precisely on impressionism. Each subsequent style appeared in search of a new one. Post-impressionism was given birth to by the same impressionists who decided that their method was limited: deep and polysemantic symbolism was a response to painting that had “lost its meaning,” and modernism, even by its name, calls for something new. Of course, many changes have occurred in art since 1874, but all modern trends in painting are, in one way or another, based on the fleeting Parisian impression.

Impressionism (French impressionnisme, from impression - impression), a movement in art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, whose masters, recording 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 (formally not a member of the Impressionist group), Degas, Renoir, and Monet brought freshness and spontaneity of perception of life to fine art.

French artists turned to the depiction of instantaneous situations, snatched from the flow of reality, the spiritual life of a person, the depiction of strong passions, the spiritualization of nature, interest in the national past, the desire for synthetic forms of art are combined with motives of world grief, a desire to explore and recreate the “shadow”, " the night" side of the human soul, with the famous "romantic irony", which allowed the romantics to boldly compare and equate the high and the low, the tragic and the comic, the real and the fantastic. Impressionist artists used fragmentary realities of situations, used seemingly unbalanced compositional structures, unexpected angles, points of view, and cross-sections of figures.

In the 1870–1880s, the landscape of French impressionism was formed: C. Monet, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley developed a consistent system of plein air, creating in their paintings a feeling of sparkling sunlight, the richness of the colors of nature, the dissolution of forms in the vibration of light and air. The name of the movement comes from the name of Claude Monet’s painting “Impression. Rising Sun” (“Impression. Soleil levant”; exhibited in 1874, now in the Marmottan Museum, Paris). The decomposition of complex colors into pure components, which were applied to the canvas in separate strokes, colored shadows, reflexes and values ​​gave rise to an unprecedentedly light, vibrant painting of impressionism.

Certain aspects and techniques of this trend in painting were used by painters from Germany (M. Lieberman, L. Corinth), 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 sculpture of the 1880–1910s, which has some impressionistic features - the desire to convey instantaneous movement, fluidity and softness of form, plastic sketchiness (works by O. Rodin, bronze figurines by Degas, etc.). Impressionism in the fine arts influenced the development of expressive means of contemporary literature, music, and theater. In interaction and polemics with the painting system of this style, the movements of neo-impressionism and post-impressionism arose in the artistic culture of France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Neo-Impressionism(French neo-impressionnisme) is a movement in painting that arose in France around 1885, when its main masters, J. Seurat and P. Signac, developed a new painting technique of divisionism. French neo-impressionists and their followers (T. van Rijselberghe 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 and fragmentation of the impressionistic composition, and resorted to planar decorative solutions in their landscapes and multi-figure panel paintings.

Post-Impressionism(from Latin post - after and impressionism) - the collective name of the main movements of French painting of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Since the mid-1880s, masters of post-impressionism have been looking for new means of expression that can overcome the empiricism of artistic thinking and allow them to move from the impressionistic recording 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 active interaction between individual movements and individual creative systems. Post-impressionism usually includes the work of the masters of neo-impressionism, the Nabi group, as well as V. van Gogh, P. Cezanne, P. Gauguin.

Reference and biographical data of the "Small Bay Planet Art Gallery" were prepared on the basis of materials from the "History of Foreign Art" (edited by M.T. Kuzmina, N.L. Maltseva), "Art Encyclopedia of Foreign Classical Art", "Great Russian Encyclopedia".