Today, the masterpieces of impressionist artists are perceived by us in the context of world art: for us, they have long since become classics. However, this was by no means always the case. It happened that their paintings were not allowed to official exhibitions, they were criticized in the press, they did not want to buy even for a nominal fee. There were years of despair, need and deprivation. And fighting for the opportunity to paint the world the way they saw it. It took many decades for the majority to be able to comprehend and perceive, to see themselves through their eyes. What was it like, the world into which impressionism invaded in the early 1860s, like a cheerful wind that bestowed transformations?
The social upheavals of the late 18th century, the revolutions in France and America, transformed the very essence of Western culture, which could not but affect the role of art in a rapidly changing society. Accustomed to social order from the ruling dynasty or the church, the artists suddenly found that they were left without their clients. The nobility and clergy, the main customers of art, experienced serious difficulties. A new era has set in, the era of capitalism, which has completely transformed the rules and priorities.
Gradually, a wealthy middle class grew in the emerging republics and democratic powers, as a result of which a new art market began to flourish. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs and merchants, as a rule, lacked the hereditary culture and upbringing, without which it was impossible to correctly appreciate the variety of plot allegories or skillful performing skills that have long fascinated the aristocracy.
Not distinguished by an aristocratic upbringing and education, the representatives of the middle class, who became consumers of art, were obliged to initially focus on the considerations of newspaper critics and official experts. The old academies of arts, which are the custodians of the classical foundations, have become the central arbiters in matters of artistic gravity. It is not paradoxical that some young and inquiring painters, who were sick of conformity, rebelled against the formal dominance of academicism in art.
One of the essential strongholds of academicism of those times was the exhibitions of contemporary art patronized by the authorities. Such exhibitions were called Salons - according to the tradition referring to the name of the hall in the Louvre, where once court artists exhibited their paintings.
Participation in the Salon was the only chance to attract the interest of the press and clients to their works. Auguste Renoir, in one of his letters to Durand-Ruel, speaks of the current state of affairs: “In all of Paris, there are hardly fifteen admirers who can recognize the artist without the help of the Salon, and eighty thousand people who will not acquire even a square centimeter of canvas if the artist does not admitted to the Salon.
The young painters had no choice but to appear in the Salons: at the exhibition they could hear the unflattering words not only of the jury members, but also of deeply respected painters, such as Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, who were the favorites of young people, thereby receiving impetus for future creativity. In addition, the Salon was a unique opportunity to acquire a customer, to be noticed, to arrange a career in art. The award of the Salon marked for the artist a pledge of professional recognition. Conversely, if the jury rejected the submitted work, this was tantamount to an aesthetic suspension.
Often the picture proposed for consideration did not correspond to the usual canons, for which the Salon jury rejected it: in the artistic environment, this episode raised a scandal and sensation.
One of the artists whose involvement in the Salon invariably created a scandal and caused a lot of anxiety to academicians was Edouard Manet. A great scandal was accompanied by demonstrations of his paintings "Breakfast on the Grass" (1863) and "Olympia" (1865), created in an unusually harsh manner, containing an aesthetic alien to the Salon. And in the painting "The Incident at the Bullfight", presented at the Salon of 1864, the artist's passion for Goya's work affected. In the foreground, Manet painted the prostrate figure of a bullfighter. The background of the picture was the arena stretching inland and the rows of discouraged, dumbfounded spectators. Such a sharp and defiant composition provoked a lot of sarcastic reviews and newspaper cartoons. Hurt by criticism, Manet tore his painting into two parts.
It should be noted that critics and caricaturists were not ashamed in choosing words and methods in order to more painfully offend the artist, to push him to some kind of reciprocal actions. "The Artist Rejected by the Salon", and later "The Impressionist", became the favorite targets of journalists who make money on public scandals. The unceasing strife of the Salon with painters of other concepts and gravitations, who were tired of the strict boundaries of outdated academism, pointedly signified a serious decline that had matured by that time in the art of the second half of the 19th century. The conservative jury of the Salon of 1863 rejected so many canvases that Emperor Napoleon III found it necessary to personally support another, parallel exhibition, so that the viewer could compare the accepted works with those rejected. This exhibition, which acquired the name "Salon of the Outcasts", became an extremely fashionable place of entertainment - people went here to laugh and be witty.
In order to bypass the academic jury, the proper painters could also establish independent individual exhibitions. The idea of the exhibition of one artist was first announced by the realist painter Gustave Courbet. He submitted a series of his works to the Paris World Exhibition of 1855. The selection committee approved his landscapes, but rejected the thematic program paintings. Then Courbet, contrary to custom, erected a personal pavilion in the vicinity of the World Exhibition. Although the aged Delacroix was impressed by Courbet's broad painting style, there were few spectators in his pavilion. During the World Exhibition in 1867, Courbet resumed this experience with great triumph - this time he hung all his works in a separate room. Édouard Manet, following the example of Courbet, opened his own gallery during the same exhibition to showcase his paintings retrospectively.
The creation of personal galleries and the private publication of catalogs implied a tangible expenditure of resources - incomparably more than those often owned by artists. However, the incidents with Courbet and Manet prompted young painters to plan a group exhibition of artists of new trends that were not accepted by the official Salon.
In addition to social changes, scientific research also had a significant effect on the art of the 19th century. In 1839, Louis Daguerre in Paris and Henry Fox Talbot in London demonstrated photographic apparatuses they had built independently. Shortly after this event, photography relieved artists and graphic artists of the obligation to simply commemorate people, places, and events. Released from the duty of copying the object, many painters rushed to the sphere of transferring their own, subjective, expression on the canvas of emotions.
The photograph gave rise to other views in European art. The lens, with a different angle of view than the human eye, formed a fragmentary representation of the composition. The change in shooting angle pushed the artists to new compositional visions, which became the basis of the Impressionist aesthetic. One of the main principles of this trend was spontaneity.
In the same year 1839, when the camera was created, Michel Eugène Chevreul, a chemist from the laboratory of the Parisian Gobelin manufactory, published for the first time a logical interpretation of the perception of color by the human eye. Creating dyes for fabrics, he made sure that there were three primary colors - red, yellow and blue, when mixed, all other colors arise. With the assistance of the color wheel, Chevreul proved how shades are born, which not only perfectly illustrated a difficult scientific idea, but also presented artists with a working concept of mixing colors. The American physicist Ogden Rude and the German scientist Hermann von Helmholly, for their part, supplemented this invention with developments in the field of optics.
In 1841, the American scientist and painter John Rand patented his tin tubes for perishable paints. Previously, the artist, leaving to write in the open air, was first forced to mix the paints he needed in the workshop and then pour them into glass containers, which often beat, or into bubbles from the insides of animals, which quickly leaked. With the advent of Rand's tubes, artists have the advantage of taking all the variety of colors and shades with them to the open air. This discovery to a large extent influenced the abundance of colors of artists, and in addition convinced them to go from their workshops to nature. Soon, as one wit pointed out, there were more landscape painters than peasants in the countryside.
The pioneers of painting in the open air were the artists of the Barbizon school, which acquired its name from the village of Barbizon near the forest of Fontainebleau, where they created most of the landscapes.
If the older painters of the Barbizon school (T. Rousseau, J. Dupre) in their work were still based on the legacy of the heroic landscape, then the representatives of the younger generation (Ch. Daubigny, C. Corot) endowed this genre with the features of realism. Their canvases depict landscapes that are alien to academic idealization.
In their paintings, the Barbizons tried to recreate the diversity of the states of nature. That is why they painted from nature, trying to capture in them the immediacy of their perception. However, the use of outdated academic methods and means in painting did not help them achieve what the Impressionists later managed to achieve. Despite this, the contribution of the artists of the Barbizon school to the formation of the genre is irrefutable: having left the workshops for the open air, they offered landscape painting new ways of development.
One of the supporters of painting in nature, Eugene Boudin, instructed his young pupil Claude Monet, what needs to be done in the open air - in the midst of light and air, to paint what you contemplate. This rule became the basis of plein air painting. Monet soon introduced his friends, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Basil, a new theory: to paint only what you observe at a specific distance and in a specific light. In the evenings in Parisian cafes, young painters happily shared their ideas and passionately discussed their new discoveries.
This is how impressionism appeared - a revolutionary trend in art in the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The painters who embarked on the path of impressionism tried to more naturally and truthfully capture in their works the world around them and everyday reality in their endless mobility and impermanence, to express their fleeting sensations.
Impressionism was a response to the stagnation of academicism that dominated art in those years, the desire to free painting from that hopeless situation in which it fell through the fault of the Salon artists. The fact that contemporary art is in decline was repeated by many progressive-minded people: Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Charles Baudelaire. Impressionism was a kind of shock therapy for the “suffering organism”.
With the advent of young genre painters Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, the wind of change burst into French painting, giving the immediacy of contemplation of life, the presentation of fleeting, as it were, unexpected situations and movements, illusory unsteadiness and imbalance of forms, fragmentary composition, unpredictable points of view and angles. .
In the evenings, when the artists no longer had the opportunity to paint their canvases due to poor lightening, they left their studios and sat behind passionate disputes in Parisian cafes. So the Guerbois cafe became one of the invariable meeting places for a handful of artists who united around Edouard Manet. Regular meetings were held on Thursdays, and on other days one could catch a group of animatedly talking or arguing artists there. Claude Monet described the meetings at the Café Gerbois as follows: “There could be nothing more exciting than these meetings and the endless clash of views. They sharpened our minds, stimulated our noble and heartfelt aspirations, gave us a boost of enthusiasm that sustained us for many weeks until the idea was completely formed. We left these meetings in high spirits, with a strengthened will, with thoughts more distinct and clear.
On the eve of the 1870s, impressionism was also founded in the French landscape: Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley were the first to develop a consistent plein air system. They painted their canvases without sketches and sketches in the open air right on the canvas, embodying in their paintings the sparkling sunlight, the fabulous abundance of the colors of nature, the dissolution of the objects represented in the environment, the vibrations of light and air, the riot of reflexes. To achieve this goal, the color system studied by them in all details, in which the natural color was decomposed into the colors of the solar spectrum, greatly contributed. To create an unusually bright, delicate colorful texture, the artists applied pure color to the canvas in separate strokes, while optical mixing was expected in the human eye. This technique, later transformed and theoretically argued, became the centerpiece of another outstanding artistic aspiration - pointillism, called "divisionism" (from the French "diviser" - to divide).
The Impressionists showed an increased interest in the connections between the object and the environment. The subject of their scrupulous creative analysis was the transformation of the color and character of an object in a changing environment. To achieve this idea, the same object was depicted repeatedly. With the addition of pure color in the shadows and reflections, the black paint almost left the palette.
Critic Jules Laforgue spoke of the phenomenon of impressionism in the following way: “The impressionist sees and conveys nature as it is, that is, only with enchanting vibrations. Drawing, light, volume, perspective, chiaroscuro - all this is a receding classification. It turns out that everything is determined by the vibrations of color and must be imprinted on the canvas by the vibrations of color.
Thanks to outdoor activities and meetings in cafes on December 27, 1873, "Anonymous, sculptors, engravers, etc." - so at first they called themselves the Impressionists. The society's first exhibition took place in the spring a year later at the Commercial Gallery of Nadar, an experimental photographer who also sold modern art.
The debut came on April 15, 1874. The exhibition was planned to be held for a month, visiting time - from ten to six and, which was also an innovation, from eight to ten in the evening. The entrance ticket cost one franc, catalogs could be bought for fifty centimes. At first, the exhibition seemed to be filled with visitors, but the crowd was engaged there only in mockery. Some joked that the task of these artists could be achieved by loading a gun with different tubes of paint, then shooting at the canvas and finishing with a signature.
Opinions were divided: either the exhibition was not taken seriously at all, or it was criticized to the nines. The general perception can be expressed in the following article of sarcastic aspiration "Impressionist Exhibition", signed by Louis Leroy, published in the form of a feuilleton. Here is described the dialogue of the author with the academician-landscape painter, awarded with medals, together they pass through the halls of the exhibition:
“... The imprudent artist came there, not assuming anything bad, he expected to see canvases there that can be found everywhere, indicative and useless, more useless than indicative, but not far from some artistic standards, a culture of form and respect for the old masters.
Alas, form! Alas, old masters! We're not going to read them anymore, my poor friend! We've changed everything!"
The exhibition also featured a landscape by Claude Monet, showing the morning dawn in a bay shrouded in mist - the painter called it “Impression. Sunrise" (Impression). Here is a commentary by one of the characters in a satirical article by Louis Leroy on this canvas, which gave the name to the most sensational and famous movement in the art of the 19th century:
“...- What is drawn here? Look in the catalog. - "Impression. Sunrise". - Impression - as I expected. I was just thinking to myself that since I am under the impression, then some impression must be conveyed in it ... and what kind of looseness, what smoothness of execution! Wallpaper in the original degree of processing is more perfect than this seascape ... ".
Personally, Monet was in no way against such a name for the artistic technique that he applied in practice. The main essence of his work is precisely capturing and capturing the elusive moments of life, which he worked on, giving rise to his countless series of paintings: “Hacks”, “Poplars”, “Rouen Cathedral”, “Saint-Lazare Station”, “Pond at Giverny” , "London. Parliament Building and others. Another case, Edgar Degas, who liked to call himself "independent" because he did not participate in the Salon. His sharp, grotesque style of writing, which served as an example for many supporters (among whom Toulouse-Lautrec was especially outstanding), was inadmissible for the academic jury. Both of these painters became the most proactive organizers of subsequent exhibitions of the Impressionists, both in France and abroad - in England, Germany, and the USA.
Auguste Renoir, on the contrary, appearing in the first exhibitions of the Impressionists, did not lose hope of conquering the Salon, sending two paintings to his exhibitions every year. He explains the characteristic duality of his actions in correspondence with his comrade and patron Durand-Ruel: “... I do not support painful opinions that a work is worthy or unworthy, depending on the place where it is shown. In short, I do not want to waste time in vain and be angry with Salon. I don't even want to pretend to be angry. I just think that you need to draw as soon as possible, that's all. If I were reproached for being unscrupulous in my art, or out of absurd ambition I renounce my views, I would accept such accusations. But since there is nothing even close to it, there is no need to reproach me.”
Not considering himself officially involved in the direction of the Impressionists, Edouard Manet considered himself a realist painter. However, the incessant close relationship with the Impressionists, visiting their exhibitions, imperceptibly transformed the style of the painter, bringing it closer to the Impressionist. In the dying years of his life, the colors in his paintings brighten, the stroke is sweeping, the composition is fragmentary. Like Renoir, Manet was waiting for the favor of official experts in the field of art and was eager to take part in the exhibitions of the Salon. But against his will, he became the idol of the Parisian avant-garde artists, their uncrowned king. Despite everything, he stubbornly stormed the Salon with his canvases. Only before his death he was fortunate enough to acquire the official location of the Salon. Found it and Auguste Renoir.
Describing the key persons of Impressionism, it would be ugly not to recall, at least fragmentarily, the person with the help of whom the repeatedly disgraced artistic movement became a significant artistic acquisition of the 19th century and conquered the whole world. The name of this man is Paul Durand-Ruel, a collector, art dealer, who repeatedly finds himself on the verge of bankruptcy, but who has not abandoned his attempts to establish impressionism as a new art that has yet to reach its zenith. He organized exhibitions of the Impressionists in Paris and London, arranged personal exhibitions of painters in his gallery, organized auctions, simply assisted the artists financially: there were times when many of them did not have money for paints and canvas. Proof of the ardent gratitude and reverence of the artists is their letters to Durand-Ruel, of which there are plenty left. The personality of Durand-Ruel is an example of an intelligent collector and benefactor.
"Impressionism" is a relative concept. All the painters that we reckon with this trend have undergone academic training, which involved scrupulous elaboration of details and a smooth, glossy painting surface. However, they soon preferred to the usual themes and plots prescribed by the Salon, paintings in a realistic direction, reflecting the real reality, everyday life. Subsequently, each of them wrote for a certain time in the style of impressionism, trying to objectively convey objects in their paintings under different lighting conditions. After such an impressionistic stage, most of these avant-garde artists turned to independent research, acquiring the collective name "post-impressionism"; later their work contributed to the formation of abstractionism of the 20th century.
In the 70s of the XIX century, Europe became addicted to Japanese art. Edmond de Goncourt in his notes says: “... Passion for Japanese art ... embraced everything - from painting to fashion. At first, it was the mania of such eccentrics as my brother and I, ... subsequently, impressionist artists joined us. Indeed, in the paintings of the Impressionists of that time, the attributes of Japanese culture were often captured: fans, kimonos, screens. They also learned stylistic methods and plastic solutions from Japanese engraving. Many Impressionists were keen collectors of Japanese prints. For example, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas.
In general, the so-called impressionists from 1874 to 1886 staged 8 exhibitions with unequal time intervals; half of the 55 painters who belonged to the Anonymous Society, due to various circumstances, appeared only in the 1st. An exceptional participant in all 8 exhibitions was Camille Pissarro, who stood out for his calm, peaceful disposition.
In 1886, the final exhibition of the Impressionists took place, but as an artistic method, it continued to exist. Painters did not leave hard work. Although the former partnership, unity, was no longer available. Each paved his own way. Historical confrontations ended, ended in the triumph of new views, and there was no need to join forces. The glorious unity of the Impressionist artists split, and could not help but split: they were all painfully dissimilar, not only in temperament, but also in views, in artistic convictions.
Impressionism, as a direction, consistent with its time, did not fail to leave the borders of France. Similar questions were asked by painters in other countries (James Whistler in England and the USA, Max Lieberman and Lovis Corinth in Germany, Konstantin Korovin and Igor Grabar in Russia). The fascination of impressionism with instantaneous movement, fluid form was also adopted by sculptors (Auguste Rodin in France, Paolo Trubetskoy and Anna Golubkina in Russia).
Having carried out a revolution in the views of contemporaries, expanding his worldview, the Impressionists thereby paved the way for the subsequent formation of art and the emergence of new aesthetic aspirations and ideas, new forms that did not take long to wait. Neo-impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, which arose from impressionism, subsequently also stimulated the formation and development of new aesthetic trends and trends.
The phrase "Russian Impressionism" only a year ago cut the ear of the average citizen of our vast country. Every educated person knows about the light, bright and impetuous French impressionism, can distinguish Monet from Manet and recognize Van Gogh's sunflowers from all still lifes. Someone heard something about the American branch of the development of this direction of painting - more urban compared to the French landscapes of Hassam and portraits of Chase. But researchers argue about the existence of Russian impressionism to this day.
Konstantin Korovin
The history of Russian impressionism began with the painting "Portrait of a chorus girl" by Konstantin Korovin, as well as with misunderstanding and condemnation of the public. When I first saw this work, I. E. Repin did not immediately believe that the work was done by a Russian painter: “Spaniard! I see. Boldly, juicy writes. Wonderful. But it's just painting for painting's sake. Spaniard, however, with temperament ... ". Konstantin Alekseevich himself began to paint his canvases in an impressionistic manner as early as his student years, being unfamiliar with the paintings of Cezanne, Monet and Renoir, long before his trip to France. Only thanks to Polenov's experienced eye did Korovin learn that he was using the technique of the French of that time, which he came to intuitively. At the same time, the Russian artist is betrayed by the subjects that he uses for his paintings - the recognized masterpiece "Northern Idyll", written in 1892 and stored in the Tretyakov Gallery, shows us Korovin's love for Russian traditions and folklore. This love was instilled in the artist by the "Mammoth Circle" - a community of creative intelligentsia, which included Repin, Polenov, Vasnetsov, Vrubel and many other friends of the famous philanthropist Savva Mamontov. In Abramtsevo, where Mamontov's estate was located and where members of the art circle gathered, Korovin was fortunate enough to meet and work with Valentin Serov. Thanks to this acquaintance, the work of the already accomplished artist Serov acquired the features of light, bright and impetuous impressionism, which we see in one of his early works - “Open Window. Lilac".
Portrait of a chorus girl, 1883
Northern idyll, 1886
Bird cherry, 1912
Gurzuf 2, 1915
Pier in Gurzuf, 1914
Paris, 1933
Valentin Serov
Serov's painting is permeated with a feature inherent only in Russian impressionism - his paintings reflect not only the impression of what the artist saw, but also the state of his soul at the moment. For example, in the painting "St. Mark's Square in Venice", painted in Italy, where Serov went to in 1887 due to a serious illness, cold gray tones predominate, which gives us an idea of the artist's condition. But, despite the rather gloomy palette, the picture is a reference impressionistic work, since on it Serov managed to capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey his fleeting impressions. In a letter to his bride from Venice, Serov wrote: “In this century, everything is written that is difficult, nothing encouraging. I want, I want what is gratifying, and I will write only what is gratifying.”
Open window. Lilac, 1886
St. Mark's Square in Venice, 1887
Girl with peaches (Portrait of V. S. Mamontova)
Coronation. Confirmation of Nicholas II in the Assumption Cathedral, 1896
Girl illuminated by the sun, 1888
Bathing a horse, 1905
Alexander Gerasimov
One of the students of Korovin and Serov, who adopted their expressive brushstroke, bright palette and etude style of writing, was Alexander Mikhailovich Gerasimov. The heyday of the artist's work came at the time of the revolution, which could not but be reflected in the plots of his paintings. Despite the fact that Gerasimov gave his brush to the service of the party and became famous for his outstanding portraits of Lenin and Stalin, he continued to work on impressionistic landscapes that were close to his soul. The work of Alexander Mikhailovich “After the Rain” reveals to us the artist as a master of conveying air and light in the picture, which Gerasimov owes to the influence of his eminent mentors.
Painters at Stalin's dacha, 1951
Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, 1950s
After the rain. Wet Terrace, 1935
Still life. Field bouquet, 1952
Igor Grabar
In a conversation about late Russian impressionism, one cannot but turn to the work of the great artist Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, who adopted many of the techniques of French painters of the second half of the 19th century thanks to his numerous trips to Europe. Using the techniques of the classical impressionists, Grabar depicts absolutely Russian landscape motifs and everyday scenes in his paintings. While Monet paints the blooming gardens of Giverny, and Degas paints beautiful ballerinas, Grabar depicts the harsh Russian winter and village life with the same pastel colors. Most of all, Grabar liked to depict frost on his canvases and dedicated a whole collection of works to him, consisting of more than a hundred small multi-colored sketches created at different times of the day and in different weather. The difficulty of working on such drawings was that the paint hardened in the cold, so I had to work quickly. But this is precisely what allowed the artist to recreate “that very moment” and convey his impression of it, which is the main idea of classical impressionism. Often Igor Emmanuilovich's style of painting is called scientific impressionism, because he attached great importance to light and air on canvases and created many studies on color reproduction. Moreover, it is to him that we owe the chronological arrangement of paintings in the Tretyakov Gallery, of which he was director in 1920-1925.
Birch alley, 1940
Winter landscape, 1954
Hoarfrost, 1905
Pears on a blue tablecloth, 1915
Corner of the estate (Ray of the sun), 1901
Yuri Pimenov
Completely non-classical, but still, impressionism developed in the Soviet era, a prominent representative of which is Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov, who came to the image of a “fleeting impression in pastel colors” after working in the style of expressionism. One of the most famous works of Pimenov is the painting "New Moscow" of the 1930s - light, warm, as if painted with Renoir's airy strokes. But at the same time, the plot of this work is completely incompatible with one of the main ideas of impressionism - the rejection of the use of social and political themes. "New Moscow" Pimenov just perfectly reflects the social changes in the life of the city, which have always inspired the artist. “Pimenov loves Moscow, its new, its people. The painter generously gives this feeling to the viewer,” wrote artist and researcher Igor Dolgopolov in 1973. And indeed, looking at the paintings of Yuri Ivanovich, we are imbued with love for Soviet life, new quarters, lyrical housewarming and urbanism, captured in the technique of impressionism.
Pimenov's work proves once again that everything "Russian", brought from other countries, has its own special and unique path of development. So French impressionism in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union absorbed the features of the Russian worldview, national character and way of life. Impressionism, as a way of conveying only the perception of reality in its pure form, remained alien to Russian art, because every painting by Russian artists is filled with meaning, awareness, the state of the changeable Russian soul, and not just a fleeting impression. Therefore, next weekend, when the Museum of Russian Impressionism will re-present the main exposition to Muscovites and guests of the capital, everyone will find something for themselves among the sensual portraits of Serov, Pimenov's urbanism and landscapes atypical for Kustodiev.
New Moscow
Lyrical housewarming, 1965
Dressing room of the Bolshoi Theatre, 1972
Early morning in Moscow, 1961
Paris. Rue Saint-Dominique. 1958
Stewardess, 1964
Perhaps, for most people, the names of Korovin, Serov, Gerasimov and Pimenov are still not associated with a certain style of art, but the Museum of Russian Impressionism, which opened in May 2016 in Moscow, nevertheless collected the works of these artists under one roof.
Impressionism (impressionnisme) is a style of painting that appeared at the end of the 19th century in France and then spread throughout the world. The very idea of impressionism lies in its name: impression - impression. Artists who were tired of the traditional techniques of painting academism, which, in their opinion, did not convey all the beauty and liveliness of the world, began to use completely new techniques and methods of depiction, which were supposed to express in the most accessible form not a “photographic” look, but an impression from what you see. In his painting, the impressionist artist, using the nature of strokes and color palette, tries to convey the atmosphere, heat or cold, strong wind or peaceful silence, foggy rainy morning or bright sunny afternoon, as well as his personal experiences from what he saw.
Impressionism is a world of feelings, emotions and fleeting impressions. It is not external realism or naturalness that is valued here, but the realism of the expressed sensations, the internal state of the picture, its atmosphere, depth. Initially, this style was heavily criticized. The first Impressionist paintings were exhibited at the Salon des Les Misérables in Paris, where works by artists rejected by the official Paris Art Salon were exhibited. For the first time the term "Impressionism" was used by the critic Louis Leroy, who wrote a disparaging review in the magazine "Le Charivari" about the exhibition of artists. As the basis for the term, he took the painting by Claude Monet “Impression. Rising Sun". He called all artists impressionists, which can be roughly translated as "impressionists." At first, the paintings were indeed criticized, but soon more and more fans of the new direction in art began to come to the salon, and the genre itself turned from an outcast into a recognized one.
It is worth noting that the artists of the late 19th century in France did not come up with a new style out of nowhere. They took as a basis the techniques of the painters of the past, including the artists of the Renaissance. Such painters as El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Rubens, Turner and others, long before the emergence of impressionism, tried to convey the mood of the picture, the liveliness of nature, the special expressiveness of the weather with the help of various intermediate tones, bright or vice versa dull strokes that looked like abstract things. In their paintings, they used it quite sparingly, so the unusual technique was not evident to the viewer. The Impressionists, on the other hand, decided to take these depiction methods as the basis for their works.
Another specific feature of the works of the Impressionists is a kind of superficial everydayness, which, however, contains incredible depth. They do not try to express any deep philosophical themes, mythological or religious tasks, historical and important events. The paintings of artists of this direction are inherently simple and everyday - landscapes, still lifes, people walking down the street or doing their usual things, and so on. It is precisely such moments where there is no excessive thematicity that distracts a person, feelings and emotions from what they see come to the fore. Also, the Impressionists, at least at the beginning of their existence, did not depict "heavy" topics - poverty, wars, tragedies, suffering, and so on. Impressionist paintings are most often the most positive and joyful works, where there is a lot of light, bright colors, smoothed chiaroscuro, smooth contrasts. Impressionism is a pleasant impression, the joy of life, the beauty of every moment, pleasure, purity, sincerity.
The most famous impressionists were such great artists as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and many others.
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Alfred Sisley - Lawns in Spring
Camille Pissarro - Boulevard Montmartre. Afternoon, sunny.
Impressionism is a direction 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's 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", "At 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!
Alexandra Skripkina,
In the last third of the XIX century. French art still plays a major role in the artistic life of Western European countries. At this time, many new trends appeared in painting, the representatives of which were looking for their own ways and forms of creative expression.
The most striking and significant phenomenon of French art of this period was impressionism.
The Impressionists announced themselves on April 15, 1874 at the Paris exhibition, held in the open air on the Boulevard des Capucines. Here, 30 young artists whose work was rejected by the Salon exhibited their paintings. The central place in the exposition was given to the painting by Claude Monet “Impression. Sunrise". This composition is interesting because for the first time in the history of painting, the artist tried to convey his impression on canvas, and not the object of reality.
The exhibition was visited by the representative of the Sharivari edition, reporter Louis Leroy. It was he who first called Monet and his associates "impressionists" (from the French impression - impression), thus expressing his negative assessment of their painting. Soon this ironic name lost its original negative meaning and entered the history of art forever.
The exhibition on Boulevard des Capucines became a kind of manifesto that proclaimed the emergence of a new trend in painting. It was attended by O. Renoir, E. Degas, A. Sisley, C. Pissarro, P. Cezanne, B. Morisot, A. Guillaumin, as well as masters of the older generation - E. Boudin, C. Daubigny, I. Jonkind.
The most important thing for the Impressionists was to convey the impression of what they saw, to capture on canvas a brief moment of life. In this way, the Impressionists resembled photographers. The plot didn't really matter to them. The artists took the themes for their paintings from the everyday life around them. They painted quiet streets, evening cafes, rural landscapes, city buildings, artisans at work. An important role in their paintings was played by the play of light and shadow, sunbeams jumping over objects and giving them a slightly unusual and surprisingly lively look. In order to see objects in natural light, to convey the changes that occur in nature at different times of the day, the impressionist artists left their workshops and went into the open air (plein air).
The Impressionists used a new painting technique: they did not mix paints on an easel, but immediately applied them to the canvas in separate strokes. This technique made it possible to convey a sense of dynamics, slight fluctuations in the air, the movement of leaves on trees and water in the river.
Usually the paintings of representatives of this direction did not have a clear composition. The artist transferred to the canvas a moment snatched from life, so his work resembled a photographic frame taken by accident. The Impressionists did not adhere to the clear boundaries of the genre, for example, the portrait often looked like a domestic scene.
From 1874 to 1886, the Impressionists organized 8 exhibitions, after which the group broke up. As for the public, it, like most critics, perceived the new art with hostility (for example, C. Monet’s painting was called “daub”), so many artists representing this trend lived in extreme poverty, sometimes without the means to finish what they started picture. And only by the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century. the situation has changed radically.
In their work, the Impressionists used the experience of their predecessors: romantic artists (E. Delacroix, T. Gericault), realists (C. Corot, G. Courbet). The landscapes of J. Constable had a great influence on them.
E. Manet played a significant role in the emergence of a new trend.
Edouard Manet
Edouard Manet, born in 1832 in Paris, is one of the most significant figures in the history of world painting, who laid the foundation for impressionism.
The formation of his artistic worldview was largely influenced by the defeat of the French bourgeois revolution of 1848. This event so excited the young Parisian that he decided on a desperate step and fled from home, becoming a sailor on a sea sailing ship. However, in the future, he did not travel much, giving all his mental and physical strength to work.
Manet's parents, cultured and wealthy people, dreamed of an administrative career for their son, but their hopes were not destined to come true. Painting - that's what interested the young man, and in 1850 he entered the School of Fine Arts, in the workshop of Couture, where he received good professional training. It was here that the novice artist felt disgust for the academic and salon stamps in art, which cannot fully reflect what is subject only to a real master with his individual style of writing.
Therefore, after studying for some time in the workshop of Couture and gaining experience, Manet leaves it in 1856 and turns to the canvases of his great predecessors exhibited in the Louvre, copying and carefully studying them. The works of such masters as Titian, D. Velazquez, F. Goya and E. Delacroix had a great influence on his creative views; the young artist bowed before the latter. In 1857, Manet visited the great maestro and asked for permission to make several copies of his "Dante's Barque", which have survived to this day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Lyon.
second half of the 1860s. the artist devoted himself to the study of museums in Spain, England, Italy and Holland, where he copied paintings by Rembrandt, Titian, and others. In 1861, his works “Portrait of Parents” and “Guitarist” received critical acclaim and were awarded an “Honorable Mention”.
The study of the work of old masters (mainly Venetians, Spaniards of the 17th century, and later F. Goya) and its rethinking leads to the fact that by the 1860s. there is a contradiction in Manet's art, manifested in the imposition of a museum imprint on some of his early paintings, which include: The Spanish Singer (1860), partly The Boy with the Dog (1860), The Old Musician (1862).
As for the heroes, the artist, like the realists of the middle of the 19th century, finds them in the seething Parisian crowd, among those walking in the Tuileries garden and regular cafe visitors. Basically, this is a bright and colorful world of bohemia - poets, actors, artists, models, participants in the Spanish bullfight: “Music at the Tuileries” (1860), “Street Singer” (1862), “Lola from Valencia” (1862), “Breakfast at grass" (1863), "Flutist" (1866), "Portrait of E. Zsl" (1868).
Among the early canvases, a special place is occupied by the "Portrait of the Parents" (1861), which is a very accurate realistic sketch of the appearance and character of the elderly couple. The aesthetic significance of the picture lies not only in a detailed penetration into the spiritual world of the characters, but also in how accurately the combination of observation and richness of pictorial development is conveyed, indicating knowledge of the artistic traditions of E. Delacroix.
Another canvas, which is the painter's program work and, it must be said, is very typical of his early work, is "Breakfast on the Grass" (1863). In this picture, Manet took a certain plot composition, completely devoid of any significance.
The picture may well be considered as an image of the breakfast of two artists in the bosom of nature, surrounded by female models (in fact, the artist’s brother Eugene Manet, F. Lenkof, and one female model, Quiz Meran, posed for the picture, whose services Manet resorted to quite often). One of them entered the stream, and the other, naked, sits in the company of two men dressed in artistic fashion. As you know, the motive of comparing a dressed male and a naked female body is traditional and goes back to Giorgione's painting "Country Concert", located in the Louvre.
The compositional arrangement of the figures partially reproduces the famous Renaissance engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi from a painting by Raphael. This canvas, as it were, polemically asserts two interrelated positions. One is the need to overcome the cliches of salon art, which has lost its true connection with a great artistic tradition, and to turn directly to the realism of the Renaissance and the 17th century, that is, the true origins of the realist art of the new time. Another provision confirms the right and duty of the artist to portray the characters around him from everyday life. At that time, this combination carried a certain contradiction. Most believed that a new stage in the development of realism could not be achieved by filling old compositional schemes with new types and characters. But Edouard Manet managed to overcome the duality of the principles of painting in his early period of creativity.
However, despite the traditional nature of the plot and composition, as well as the presence of paintings by salon masters depicting naked mythical beauties in frank seductive poses, Manet's painting caused a big scandal among modern bourgeois. The audience was shocked by the juxtaposition of a naked female body with prosaically everyday, modern male attire.
As for the pictorial norms, Luncheon on the Grass was written in a compromise, characteristic of the 1860s. manner, characterized by a tendency to dark colors, black shadows, as well as not always consistent appeal to plein air lighting and open color. If we turn to a preliminary sketch made in watercolor, then on it (more than on the picture itself) it is noticeable how great the master's interest in new pictorial problems is.
The painting "Olympia" (1863), in which the outline of a reclining naked woman is given, seems to refer to generally accepted compositional traditions - a similar image is found in Giorgione, Titian, Rembrandt and D. Velasquez. However, in his creation, Manet follows a different path, following F. Goya (“Naked Maha”) and rejecting the mythological motivation of the plot, the interpretation of the image introduced by the Venetians and partially preserved by D. Velasquez (“Venus with a Mirror”).
"Olympia" is not at all a poetically rethought image of female beauty, but an expressive, masterfully executed portrait, accurately and, one might even say, somewhat coldly conveying the resemblance to Quiz Meran, Manet's constant model. The painter reliably shows the natural pallor of the body of a modern woman who is afraid of the sun's rays. While the old masters emphasized the poetic beauty of the naked body, the musicality and harmony of its rhythms, Manet focuses on conveying the motives of life's specificity, completely departing from the poetic idealization inherent in his predecessors. Thus, for example, the gesture of George's Venus with the left hand in Olympia acquires an almost vulgar connotation in its indifference. Extremely characteristic is the indifferent, but at the same time attentively fixing the viewer's gaze of the model, opposed to the self-absorption of Venus Giorgione and the sensitive dreaminess of Titian's Venus of Urbino.
In this picture, there are signs of a transition to the next stage in the development of the painter's creative manner. There is a rethinking of the usual compositional scheme, which consists in prosaic observation and pictorial and artistic vision of the world. The juxtaposition of instantly seized sharp contrasts contributes to the destruction of the balanced compositional harmony of the old masters. Thus, the statics of a posing model and the dynamics in the images of a black woman and a black cat bending its back collide. The changes also affect the technique of painting, which gives a new understanding of the figurative tasks of the artistic language. Edouard Manet, like many other impressionists, in particular Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, abandons the outdated system of painting that developed in the 17th century. (underpainting, writing, glazing). From that time on, canvases began to be painted with a technique called “a la prima”, which was distinguished by greater immediacy, emotionality, close to etudes and sketches.
The period of transition from early to mature creativity, which occupies almost the entire second half of the 1860s for Manet, is represented by such paintings as Flutist (1866), Balcony (c. 1868-1869) and others.
On the first canvas, against a neutral olive-gray background, a boy-musician is depicted, raising a flute to his lips. The expressiveness of a barely perceptible movement, the rhythmic echo of the iridescent gold buttons on the blue uniform with the light and quick sliding of the fingers along the flute holes speak of the innate artistry and subtle powers of observation of the master. Despite the fact that the style of painting here is quite dense, the color is weighty, and the artist has not yet turned to the open air, this canvas, to a greater extent than all the others, anticipates the mature period of Manet's work. As for the Balcony, it is closer to the Olympia than to the works of the 1870s.
In 1870-1880. Manet becomes the leading painter of his time. And although the Impressionists considered him their ideological leader and inspirer, and he himself always agreed with them in interpreting the fundamental views on art, his work is much broader and does not fit into the framework of any one direction. The so-called impressionism of Manet, in fact, is closer to the art of Japanese masters. He simplifies the motives, balancing the decorative and the real, creates a generalized idea of what he saw: a pure impression, devoid of distracting details, an expression of the joy of sensation (“On the Seashore”, 1873).
In addition, as the dominant genre, he seeks to preserve a compositionally complete picture, where the main place is given to the image of a person. Manet's art is the final stage in the development of a centuries-old tradition of realistic narrative painting, which originated in the Renaissance.
In the later works of Manet, there is a tendency to move away from a detailed interpretation of the details of the environment surrounding the portrayed hero. Thus, in the portrait of Mallarme, full of nervous dynamics, the artist focuses on the poet's gesture, as if accidentally peeped, who, in a dreamy way, put his hand with a smoking cigar on the table. With all the sketchiness, the main thing in the character and mental warehouse of Mallarme is captured surprisingly accurately, with great persuasiveness. The in-depth characterization of the inner world of the individual, characteristic of the portraits of J. L. David and J. O. D. Ingres, is replaced here by a sharper and more direct characterization. Such is the gently poetic portrait of Berthe Morisot with a fan (1872) and the graceful pastel image of George Moore (1879).
In the painter's work there are works related to historical themes and major events in public life. However, it should be noted that these canvases are less successful, because problems of this kind were alien to his artistic talent, the circle of ideas and ideas about life.
So, for example, an appeal to the events of the Civil War between the North and South in the United States resulted in the image of the sinking of the corsair ship of the southerners by the northerners (“Battle of the Kirsezh” with the “Alabama”, 1864), and the episode can be more attributed to the landscape, where the military ships act as staffing. The Execution of Maximilian (1867), in essence, has the character of a genre sketch, devoid of not only interest in the conflict of the struggling Mexicans, but also the very drama of the event.
The theme of modern history was touched upon by Manet during the days of the Paris Commune (The Execution of the Communards, 1871). The sympathetic attitude towards the Communards does credit to the author of the picture, who has never been interested in such events before. But nevertheless, its artistic value is lower than other canvases, since in fact the compositional scheme of “The Execution of Maximilian” is repeated here, and the author is limited to just a sketch that does not at all reflect the meaning of the cruel collision of two opposing worlds.
In the subsequent time, Manet no longer turned to a historical genre alien to him, preferring to reveal the artistic and expressive beginning in episodes, finding them in the flow of everyday life. At the same time, he carefully selected especially characteristic moments, sought out the most expressive point of view, and then reproduced them with great skill in his paintings.
The charm of most of the creations of this period is due not so much to the significance of the event depicted as to the dynamism and witty observation of the author.
A remarkable example of an open-air group composition is the painting “In a Boat” (1874), where the combination of the outline of the stern of a sailboat, the restrained energy of the helmsman’s movements, the dreamy grace of a seated lady, the transparency of the air, the feeling of freshness of the breeze and the sliding movement of the boat creates an indescribable picture, full of light joy and freshness. .
A special niche in the work of Manet is occupied by still lifes, characteristic of different periods of his work. Thus, the early still life "Peonies" (1864-1865) depicts blooming red and white-pink buds, as well as flowers that have already blossomed and begin to fade, dropping petals on a tablecloth covering the table. Later works are notable for their effortless sketchiness. In them, the painter tries to convey the radiance of flowers, shrouded in an atmosphere permeated with light. Such is the painting "Roses in a Crystal Glass" (1882-1883).
At the end of his life, Manet, apparently, was dissatisfied with what he had achieved and tried to return to writing large completed plot compositions at a different level of skill. At this time, he begins to work on one of the most significant canvases - "The Bar at the Folies Bergère" (1881-1882), in which he approached a new level, a new stage in the development of his art, interrupted by death (as is known, during Manet was seriously ill while working). In the center of the composition is the figure of a young female saleswoman, turned front to the viewer. A slightly tired, attractive blonde, dressed in a dark dress with a deep glare, stands against the backdrop of a huge mirror that occupies the entire wall, which reflects the glow of flickering light and the vague, blurry outlines of the audience sitting at the tables of the cafe. The woman is turned to face the hall, in which, as it were, the viewer himself is located. This peculiar technique gives the traditional picture, at first glance, some unsteadiness, suggesting a juxtaposition of the real world and the reflected one. At the same time, the central axis of the picture turns out to be shifted to the right corner, in which, according to the typical for the 1870s. reception, the frame of the picture slightly blocks the figure of a man in a top hat, reflected in the mirror, talking to a young saleswoman.
Thus, in this work, the classical principle of symmetry and stability is combined with a dynamic shift to the side, as well as with fragmentation, when a certain moment (fragment) is snatched from a single stream of life.
It would be wrong to think that the plot of The Bar at the Folies Bergère is devoid of essential content and is a kind of monumentalization of the insignificant. The figure of a young, but already internally tired and indifferent to the surrounding masquerade of a woman, her wandering gaze turned to nowhere, alienation from the illusory brilliance of life behind her, bring a significant semantic shade to the work, striking the viewer with its unexpectedness.
The viewer admires the unique freshness of two roses standing on the bar in a crystal glass with sparkling edges; and then involuntarily there is a comparison of these luxurious flowers with a rose half-withered in the closeness of the hall, pinned to the neckline of the saleswoman's dress. Looking at the picture, you can see the unique contrast between the freshness of her half-open chest and the indifferent look wandering through the crowd. This work is considered to be a program in the artist's work, since it contains elements of all his favorite themes and genres: portrait, still life, various lighting effects, crowd movement.
In general, the legacy left by Manet is represented by two aspects, which are especially pronounced in his last work. Firstly, with his work, he completes and exhausts the development of the classical realistic traditions of French art of the 19th century, and secondly, he lays in art the first sprouts of those trends that will be picked up and developed by seekers of new realism in the 20th century.
The painter received full and official recognition in the last years of his life, namely in 1882, when he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor (the main award of France). Manet died in 1883 in Paris.
Claude Monet
Claude Monet, French artist, one of the founders of Impressionism, was born in 1840 in Paris.
As the son of a modest grocer who moved from Paris to Rouen, young Monet drew funny caricatures at the beginning of his career, then studied with the Rouen landscape painter Eugene Boudin, one of the creators of the plein air realistic landscape. Boudin not only convinced the future painter of the need to work in the open air, but also managed to instill in him a love of nature, careful observation and truthful transmission of what he saw.
In 1859, Monet leaves for Paris with the goal of becoming a real artist. His parents dreamed that he would enter the School of Fine Arts, but the young man does not justify their hopes and plunges headlong into the bohemian life, acquires numerous acquaintances in the artistic environment. Completely deprived of the material support of his parents, and therefore without a livelihood, Monet was forced to join the army. However, even after returning from Algeria, where he had to carry out a difficult service, he continues to lead the same way of life. A little later, he met I. Ionkind, who fascinated him with work on natural studies. And then he visits the studio of Suisse, for some time he studies in the studio of the then-famous painter of the academic direction - M. Gleyre, and also becomes close to a group of young artists (J.F. Basil, C. Pissarro, E. Degas, P. Cezanne, O Renoir, A. Sisley and others), who, like Monet himself, were looking for new ways of development in art.
The greatest influence on the novice painter was not the school of M. Gleyre, but friendship with like-minded people, ardent critics of salon academism. It was thanks to this friendship, mutual support, the opportunity to exchange experience and share achievements that a new pictorial system was born, which later received the name "impressionism".
The basis of the reform was that the work took place in nature, under the open sky. At the same time, the artists painted in the open air not only sketches, but the whole picture. Directly in contact with nature, they became more and more convinced that the color of objects is constantly changing depending on the change in lighting, the state of the atmosphere, on the proximity of other objects that cast color reflections, and many other factors. It was these changes that they sought to convey through their works.
In 1865, Monet decided to paint a large canvas "in the spirit of Manet, but in the open air." It was Luncheon on the Grass (1866), his first most significant work, depicting smartly dressed Parisians driving out of town and sitting in the shade of a tree around a tablecloth spread on the ground. The work is characterized by the traditional character of its closed and balanced composition. However, the artist's attention is directed not so much to the opportunity to show human characters or to create an expressive plot composition, but to fit human figures into the surrounding landscape and convey the atmosphere of ease and relaxation that prevails among them. To create this effect, the artist pays great attention to the transfer of sun glare breaking through the foliage, playing on the tablecloth and dress of the young lady sitting in the center. Monet accurately captures and conveys the play of color reflections on tablecloths and the translucency of a light women's dress. With these discoveries, the breaking of the old system of painting begins, which emphasizes dark shadows and a dense material manner of execution.
Since that time, Monet's approach to the world has become landscape. The human character, the relationship of people are of less interest to him. Events 1870-1871 forced Monet to emigrate to London, from where he travels to Holland. Upon his return, he paints several paintings that have become programmatic in his work. These include "Impression. Sunrise" (1872), "Lilacs in the Sun" (1873), "Boulevard des Capucines" (1873), "Field of Poppies at Argenteuil" (1873), etc.
In 1874, some of them were exhibited at the famous exhibition organized by the "Anonymous Society of Painters, Artists and Engravers", led by Monet himself. After the exhibition, Monet and a group of his like-minded people began to be called the Impressionists (from the French impression - impression). By this time, the artistic principles of Monet, characteristic of the first stage of his work, finally formed into a certain system.
In the open-air landscape Lilacs in the Sun (1873), depicting two women sitting in the shade of large bushes of flowering lilacs, their figures are treated in the same manner and with the same intentness as the bushes themselves and the grass on which they sit. The figures of people are only part of the general landscape, while the feeling of the soft warmth of early summer, the freshness of young foliage, the haze of a sunny day are conveyed with extraordinary liveliness and direct persuasiveness, not characteristic of that time.
Another picture - "Boulevard des Capucines" - reflects all the main contradictions, advantages and disadvantages of the Impressionist method. Here, a moment snatched from the flow of life of a big city is very accurately conveyed: a feeling of a deaf monotonous noise of traffic, humid transparency of the air, the rays of the February sun sliding along the bare branches of trees, a film of grayish clouds covering the blue of the sky ... The picture is fleeting, but nevertheless less vigilant and noticing the look of the artist, and the artist is sensitive, responding to all the phenomena of life. The fact that the glance is really thrown by chance is emphasized by the thoughtful compositional
reception: the frame of the picture on the right, as it were, cuts off the figures of men standing on the balcony.
The canvases of this period make the viewer feel that he himself is the protagonist of this celebration of life, filled with sunlight and the incessant hubbub of an elegant crowd.
Having settled in Argenteuil, Monet writes with great interest to the Seine, bridges, light sailboats gliding on the water surface ...
The landscape captivates him so much that, succumbing to an irresistible attraction, he builds himself a small boat and gets to his native Rouen in it, and there, amazed by the picture he sees, splashes out his feelings in sketches, which depict the surroundings of the city and large sea waters entering the mouth of the river. ships ("Argenteuil", 1872; "Sailboat in Argenteuil", 1873-1874).
1877 is marked by the creation of a series of paintings depicting the Saint-Lazare railway station. They outlined a new stage in the work of Monet.
Since that time, sketches, distinguished by their completeness, have given way to works in which the main thing is an analytical approach to the depicted (“Gare Saint-Lazare”, 1877). The change in the painting style is associated with changes in the artist's personal life: his wife Camilla falls seriously ill, poverty falls upon the family, caused by the birth of a second child.
After the death of his wife, Alice Goshede took over the care of the children, whose family rented the same house in Vetheuil as Monet. This woman later became his second wife. After some time, Monet's financial situation improved so much that he was able to buy his own house in Giverny, where he worked for the rest of the time.
The painter subtly feels new trends, which allows him to anticipate a lot with amazing insight.
from what will be achieved by artists of the late XIX - early XX centuries. It changes the attitude to color and plots
paintings. Now his attention is focused on the expressiveness of the color scheme of the brushstroke in isolation from its subject correlation, enhancing the decorative effect. Ultimately, he creates panel paintings. Simple plots 1860-1870 give way to complex, saturated with various associative motifs: epic images of rocks, elegiac ranks of poplars (“Rocks in Belle-Ile”, 1866; “Poplars”, 1891).
This period is marked by numerous serial works: the compositions of "Hacks" ("Haystack in the snow. Gloomy day", 1891; "Hacks. End of the day. Autumn", 1891), images of Rouen Cathedral ("Rouen Cathedral at noon", 1894, etc. .), views of London (“Fog in London”, 1903, etc.). Still working in an impressionistic manner and using a variety of tonality of his palette, the master aims to convey with the greatest accuracy and reliability how the illumination of the same objects can change in different weather during the day.
If you look more closely at a series of paintings about the Rouen Cathedral, it becomes clear that the cathedral here is not the embodiment of the complex world of thoughts, feelings and ideals of the people of medieval France, and not even a monument of art and architecture, but a kind of background, starting from which the author conveys the state of life light and atmosphere. The viewer feels the freshness of the morning breeze, the midday heat, the soft shadows of the impending evening, which are the true heroes of this series.
However, in addition to this, such paintings are unusual decorative compositions, which, thanks to involuntarily arising associative connections, give the viewer the impression of the dynamics of time and space.
Having moved with his family to Giverny, Monet spent a lot of time in the garden, doing his painting organization. This occupation influenced the views of the artist so much that instead of the ordinary world inhabited by people, he began to depict on his canvases the mysterious decorative world of water and plants (“Irises at Giverny”, 1923; “Weeping Willows”, 1923). Hence the views of ponds with water lilies floating in them, shown in the most famous series of his later panels (“White Water Lilies. Harmony of Blue”, 1918-1921).
Giverny became the last refuge of the artist, where he died in 1926.
It should be noted that the manner of writing the Impressionists was very different from the manner of the Academicians. Impressionists, in particular Monet and his like-minded people, were interested in the expressiveness of the color scheme of the brushstroke in isolation from its subject correlation. That is, they wrote in separate strokes, using only pure paints that were not mixed on the palette, while the desired tone was already formed in the perception of the viewer. So, for the foliage of trees and grass, along with green, blue and yellow were used, giving the right shade of green at a distance. This method gave the works of the Impressionist masters a special purity and freshness, inherent only to them. Separately laid strokes created the impression of a relief and, as it were, vibrating surface.
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Pierre Auguste Renoir, French painter, graphic artist and sculptor, one of the leaders of the Impressionist group, was born on February 25, 1841 in Limoges, in a poor family of a provincial tailor, who moved to Paris in 1845. The talent of the young Renoir was noticed by his parents quite early, and in 1854 they assigned him to a porcelain painting workshop. While visiting the workshop, Renoir simultaneously studied at the school of drawing and applied art, and in 1862, having saved money (earning money by painting coats of arms, curtains and fans), the young artist entered the School of Fine Arts. A little later, he began to visit the workshop of C. Gleyre, where he became close friends with A. Sisley, F. Basil and C. Monet. He often visited the Louvre, studying the works of such masters as A. Watteau, F. Boucher, O. Fragonard.
Communication with a group of impressionists leads Renoir to develop his own style of vision. So, for example, unlike them, throughout his entire work he turned to the image of a person as the main motive of his paintings. In addition, his work, although it was plein air, never dissolved
plastic weight of the material world in the shimmering medium of light.
The use of chiaroscuro by the painter, giving the image an almost sculptural form, makes his early works look like the works of some realist artists, in particular G. Courbet. However, a lighter and lighter color scheme, inherent only to Renoir, distinguishes this master from his predecessors ("Mother Anthony's Tavern", 1866). An attempt to convey the natural plasticity of the movement of human figures in the open air is noticeable in many of the artist's works. In "Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his wife" (1868), Renoir tries to show the feeling that connects the couple walking arm in arm: Sisley paused for a moment and gently leaned towards his wife. In this picture, with a composition reminiscent of a photographic frame, the motif of movement is still accidental and practically unconscious. However, compared with the "Tavern", the figures in the "Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his wife" seem more at ease and alive. Another important point is significant: the spouses are depicted in nature (in the garden), but Renoir still has no experience in depicting human figures in the open air.
"Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his wife" - the artist's first step on the path to new art. The next stage in the artist’s work was the painting Bathing in the Seine (c. 1869), where the figures of people walking along the shore, bathers, as well as boats and clumps of trees are brought together by the light-air atmosphere of a beautiful summer day. The painter is already freely using colored shadows and light-color reflections. His smear becomes alive and energetic.
Like C. Monet, Renoir is fond of the problem of including the human figure in the world of the environment. The artist solves this problem in the painting "Swing" (1876), but in a slightly different way than C. Monet, in which the figures of people seem to dissolve in the landscape. Renoir introduces several key figures into his composition. The picturesque manner in which this canvas is made very naturally conveys the atmosphere of a hot summer day softened by the shadow. The picture is permeated with a feeling of happiness and joy.
In the mid 1870s. Renoir paints such works as the sun-drenched landscape "Path in the Meadows" (1875), filled with light lively movement and the elusive play of bright light reflections "Moulin de la Galette" (1876), as well as "Umbrellas" (1883), "Lodge" (1874) and The End of Breakfast (1879). These beautiful canvases were created despite the fact that the artist had to work in a difficult environment, since after the scandalous exhibition of the Impressionists (1874), Renoir's work (as well as the work of his like-minded people) was subject to sharp attacks from the so-called art connoisseurs. However, during this difficult time, Renoir felt the support of two people close to him: brother Edmond (publisher of the magazine La Vie Moderne) and Georges Charpentier (owner of the weekly). They helped the artist get a small amount of money and rent a workshop.
It should be noted that in terms of composition, the landscape “Path in the Meadows” is very close to “Poppies” (1873) by C. Monet, however, the picturesque texture of Renoir’s canvases is more dense and material. Another difference regarding the compositional solution is the sky. In Renoir, for whom it was the materiality of the natural world that was important, the sky occupies only a small part of the picture, while in Monet, who depicted the sky with gray-silver or snow-white clouds running across it, it rises above a slope dotted with flowering poppies, enhancing the feeling sun-drenched summer day.
In the compositions "Moulin de la Galette" (with it a real success came to the artist), "Umbrellas", "Lodge" and "The End of Breakfast" are clearly shown (as in Manet and Degas) interest in a seemingly accidentally peeped life situation; also characteristic is the appeal to the method of cutting the frame of the compositional space, which is also characteristic of E. Degas and partly E. Manet. But, unlike the works of the latter, Renoir's paintings are distinguished by great calmness and contemplation.
The canvas “The Lodge”, in which, as if looking through binoculars rows of chairs, the author inadvertently comes across a box in which a beauty with an indifferent look is located. Her companion, on the contrary, looks at the audience with great interest. Part of his figure is cut off by the picture frame.
The work "The End of Breakfast" presents a rudimentary episode: two ladies dressed in white and black, as well as their gentleman, complete breakfast in a shady corner of the garden. The table is already set for coffee, which is served in cups made of fine pale blue porcelain. The women are waiting for the continuation of the story, which the man interrupted in order to light a cigarette. This picture is not dramatic or deep psychologism, it attracts the viewer's attention with a subtle transfer of the smallest shades of mood.
A similar feeling of calm cheerfulness permeates the "Breakfast of the Rowers" (1881), full of light and lively movement. Enthusiasm and charm emanates from the figure of a pretty young lady sitting with a dog in her arms. The artist depicted his future wife in the picture. The canvas “Nude” (1876) is filled with the same joyful mood, only in a slightly different refraction. The freshness and warmth of the body of a young woman contrasts with the bluish-cold fabric of the sheets and linen, which form a kind of background.
A characteristic feature of Renoir's work is that a person is deprived of his complex psychological and moral fullness, which is characteristic of the painting of almost all realist artists. This feature is inherent not only in works like "Nude" (where the nature of the plot motif allows for the absence of such qualities), but also in Renoir's portraits. However, this does not deprive his canvas of charm, which lies in the cheerfulness of the characters.
To the greatest extent, these qualities are felt in the famous portrait of Renoir "Girl with a Fan" (c. 1881). The canvas is the link that connects the early work of Renoir with the later, characterized by a colder and more refined color scheme. During this period, the artist, to a greater extent than before, has an interest in clear lines, in a clear drawing, as well as in the locality of color. The artist assigns a large role to rhythmic repetitions (the semicircle of a fan - the semicircular back of a red chair - sloping girlish shoulders).
However, all these trends in Renoir's painting manifested themselves most fully in the second half of the 1880s, when disappointment set in in his work and impressionism in general. Having destroyed some of his works, which the artist considered “dried”, he begins to study the work of N. Poussin, turns to the drawing of J. O. D. Ingres. As a result, his palette acquires a special luminosity. The so-called. "Pearl period", known to us from such works as "Girls at the Piano" (1892), "The Sleeping Bather" (1897), as well as portraits of sons - Pierre, Jean and Claude - "Gabriel and Jean" (1895), " Coco" (1901).
In addition, from 1884 to 1887, Renoir is working on a series of variants of the large painting "Bathers". In them, he manages to achieve a clear compositional completeness. However, all attempts to revive and rethink the traditions of the great predecessors, while turning to the plot far from the big problems of our time, ended in failure. "Bathers" only alienated the artist from his earlier direct and fresh perception of life. All this largely explains the fact that since the 1890s. Renoir's work becomes weaker: orange-red tones begin to predominate in the color of his works, and the background, devoid of airy depth, becomes decorative and flat.
Since 1903, Renoir settled in his own house in Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he continued to work on landscapes, compositions with human figures and still lifes, in which the reddish tones already mentioned above predominate. Being seriously ill, the artist can no longer hold the brushes on his own, and they are tied to his hands. However, after some time, painting has to be completely abandoned. Then the master turns to sculpture. Together with Guino's assistant, he creates several amazing sculptures, distinguished by the beauty and harmony of silhouettes, joy and life-affirming power (Venus, 1913; The Great Laundress, 1917; Motherhood, 1916). Renoir died in 1919 on his estate in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Edgar Degas
Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas, French painter, graphic artist and sculptor, the largest representative of impressionism, was born in 1834 in Paris in the family of a wealthy banker. Being well-to-do, he received an excellent education at the prestigious Lyceum named after Louis the Great (1845-1852). For some time he was a student at the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris (1853), but, feeling a craving for art, he left the university and began to attend the studio of the artist L. Lamotte (a student and follower of Ingres) and at the same time (since 1855) the School
fine arts. However, in 1856, unexpectedly for everyone, Degas left Paris and went to Italy for two years, where he studied with great interest and, like many painters, copied the works of the great masters of the Renaissance. His greatest attention is paid to the works of A. Mantegna and P. Veronese, whose inspired and colorful painting the young artist highly appreciated.
Degas's early works (mainly portraits) are characterized by a clear and precise drawing and subtle observation, combined with an exquisitely restrained manner of writing (sketches by his brother, 1856-1857; drawing of the head of Baroness Belleli, 1859) or with amazing truthfulness of execution (portrait of an Italian beggars, 1857).
Returning to his homeland, Degas turned to the historical theme, but gave it an interpretation uncharacteristic for that time. Thus, in the composition “Spartan Girls Challenge Young Men to a Competition” (1860), the master, ignoring the conditional idealization of the ancient plot, seeks to embody it as it could be in reality. Antiquity here, as in his other canvases on a historical theme, is as if passed through the prism of modernity: the images of girls and young men of Ancient Sparta with angular forms, thin bodies and sharp movements, depicted against the background of an everyday prosaic landscape, are far from classical ideas and resemble more of the ordinary teenagers of the Parisian suburbs than the idealized Spartans.
During the 1860s, there was a gradual formation of the creative method of the novice painter. In this decade, along with less significant historical canvases (“Semiramide Watching the Construction of Babylon”, 1861), the artist created several portrait works, in which observation and realistic skills were honed. In this regard, the most indicative is the painting “Head of a young woman”, created by
in 1867
In 1861, Degas met E. Manet and soon became a regular at the Gerbois cafe, where young innovators of that time gather: C. Monet, O. Renoir, A. Sisley and others. But if they are primarily interested in landscape and work in the open air , then Degas focuses more on the theme of the city, Parisian types. He is attracted to everything that is in motion; static leaves him indifferent.
Degas was a very attentive observer, subtly capturing everything that is characteristically expressive in the endless change of life phenomena. Thus, conveying the crazy rhythm of the big city, he comes to the creation of one of the variants of the everyday genre dedicated to the capitalist city.
In the work of this period, portraits stand out, among which there are many that are classified as the pearls of world painting. Among them are a portrait of the Belleli family (c. 1860-1862), a portrait of a woman (1867), a portrait of the artist's father listening to the guitarist Pagan (c. 1872).
Some paintings from the period of the 1870s are characterized by a photographic impassivity in the depiction of characters. An example is a canvas called "Dancing Lesson" (c. 1874), made in cold bluish tones. With amazing accuracy, the author captures the movements of ballerinas taking lessons from an old dance master. However, there are paintings of a different nature, such as, for example, a portrait of Viscount Lepic with his daughters on the Place de la Concorde, dating back to 1873. Here, the sober prosaic fixation is overcome due to the pronounced dynamics of the composition and the extraordinary sharpness of the transfer of Lepic's character; in a word, this happens due to the artistically sharp and sharp disclosure of the characteristically expressive beginning of life.
It should be noted that the works of this period reflect the artist's view of the event depicted by him. His paintings destroy the usual academic canons. Degas' painting The Musicians of the Orchestra (1872) is built on the sharp contrast that is created by comparing the heads of the musicians (painted in close-up) and the small figure of a dancer bowing to the audience. Interest in expressive movement and its exact copying on the canvas is also observed in numerous sketch figurines of dancers (we must not forget that Degas was also a sculptor), created by the master in order to capture the essence of movement, its logic as accurately as possible.
The artist was interested in the professional specificity of movements, postures and gestures, devoid of any poeticization. This is especially noticeable in works devoted to horse racing ("Young Jockey", 1866-1868; "Horse Racing in the Province. Crew at the Races", ca. 1872; "Jockeys in front of the stands", ca. 1879, etc.). In The Ride of Racehorses (1870s), the analysis of the professional side of the matter is given with almost reporter's accuracy. If we compare this canvas with T. Géricault's painting "The Races at Epsom", then it immediately becomes clear that, due to its obvious analyticity, Degas's work loses much to the emotional composition of T. Géricault. The same qualities are inherent in Degas' pastel "Ballerina on Stage" (1876-1878), which does not belong to the number of his masterpieces.
However, despite such one-sidedness, and perhaps even thanks to it, Degas's art is distinguished by persuasiveness and content. In his programmatic works, he very accurately and with great skill reveals the depth and complexity of the internal state of the depicted person, as well as the atmosphere of alienation and loneliness in which contemporary society lives, including the author himself.
For the first time, these moods were recorded in a small canvas “Dancer in front of a photographer” (1870s), on which the artist painted a lonely figure of a dancer, frozen in a gloomy and gloomy atmosphere in a learned pose in front of a bulky photographic apparatus. In the future, a feeling of bitterness and loneliness penetrates into such canvases as "Absinthe" (1876), "Singer from the Cafe" (1878), "Ironers" (1884) and many others. Degas showed two figures of a man and a woman, lonely and indifferent to each other and to the whole world. The dim greenish flicker of a glass filled with absinthe emphasizes the sadness and hopelessness seen in the woman's eyes and in her posture. A pale bearded man with a puffy face is gloomy and thoughtful.
Creativity Degas inherent genuine interest in the characters of people, to the peculiar features of their behavior, as well as a well-built dynamic composition that replaced the traditional one. Its main principle is to find the most expressive angles in reality itself. This distinguishes the work of Degas from the art of other impressionists (in particular, C. Monet, A. Sisley and, in part, O. Renoir) with their contemplative approach to the world around them. The artist already used this principle in his early work The Cotton Receiving Office in New Orleans (1873), which aroused E. Goncourt's admiration for its sincerity and realism. Such are his later works "Miss Lala in the Fernando Circus" (1879) and "Dancers in the Foyer" (1879), where within the same motive a subtle analysis of the change of diverse movements is given.
Sometimes this technique is used by some researchers in order to indicate the proximity of Degas with A. Watteau. Although both artists are indeed similar in some points (A. Watteau also focuses on the various shades of the same movement), it is enough to compare the drawing by A. Watteau with the image of the movements of the violinist from the aforementioned Degas composition, as the opposite of their artistic techniques is immediately felt.
If A. Watteau tries to convey the elusive transitions of one movement into another, so to speak, semitones, then for Degas, on the contrary, an energetic and contrasting change in movement motives is characteristic. He strives more for their comparison and sharp collision, often making the figure angular. In this way, the artist tries to capture the dynamics of the development of contemporary life.
In the late 1880s - early 1890s. in the work of Degas, there is a predominance of decorative motifs, which is probably due to some dulling of the vigilance of his artistic perception. If in the canvases of the early 1880s devoted to the nude (“Woman leaving the bathroom”, 1883), there is a greater interest in the vivid expressiveness of movement, then by the end of the decade the artist’s interest shifted noticeably towards the depiction of female beauty. This is especially noticeable in the painting "Bathing" (1886), where the painter with great skill conveys the charm of the flexible and graceful body of a young woman leaning over her pelvis.
Artists have painted similar paintings before, but Degas takes a slightly different path. If the heroines of other masters always felt the presence of the viewer, then here the painter depicts a woman, as if completely unconcerned about how she looks from the outside. And although such situations look beautiful and quite natural, the images in such works often approach the grotesque. After all, any poses and gestures, even the most intimate, are quite appropriate here, they are fully justified by a functional necessity: when washing, reach out to the right place, unfasten the clasp on the back, slip, grab onto something.
In the last years of his life, Degas was more involved in sculpture than painting. This is partly due to eye disease and visual impairment. He creates the same images that are present in his paintings: he sculpts figurines of ballerinas, dancers, horses. At the same time, the artist tries to convey the dynamics of movements as accurately as possible. Degas does not leave painting, which, although it fades into the background, does not completely disappear from his work.
Due to the formally expressive, rhythmic construction of compositions, the desire for a decorative-planar interpretation of the images of Degas's paintings, made in the late 1880s and during the 1890s. turn out to be devoid of realistic credibility and become like decorative panels.
Degas spent the rest of his life in his native Paris, where he died in 1917.
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro, French painter and graphic artist, was born in 1830 on about. St. Thomas (Antilles) in the family of a merchant. He was educated in Paris, where he studied from 1842 to 1847. After completing his studies, Pissarro returned to St. Thomas and began to help his father in the store. However, this was not at all what the young man dreamed of. His interest lay far beyond the counter. Painting was most important to him, but his father did not support his son's interest and was opposed to him leaving the family business. The complete misunderstanding and unwillingness of the family to meet halfway led to the fact that the completely desperate young man fled to Venezuela (1853). This act still influenced the adamant parent, and he allowed his son to go to Paris to study painting.
In Paris, Pissarro entered the studio of Suisse, where he studied for six years (from 1855 to 1861). At the World Exhibition of Painting in 1855, the future artist discovered J. O. D. Ingres, G. Courbet, but the works of C. Corot made the greatest impression on him. On the advice of the latter, continuing to visit the studio of Suisse, the young painter entered the School of Fine Arts to A. Melby. At this time, he met C. Monet, with whom he painted landscapes of the outskirts of Paris.
In 1859, Pissarro exhibited his paintings for the first time at the Salon. His early works were written under the influence of C. Corot and G. Courbet, but gradually Pissarro comes to develop his own style. A novice painter devotes a lot of time to working in the open air. He, like other impressionists, is interested in the life of nature in motion. Pissarro pays great attention to color, which can convey not only the form, but also the material essence of the object. To reveal the unique charm and beauty of nature, he uses light strokes of pure colors, which, interacting with each other, create a vibrating tonal range. Drawn in cross-shaped, parallel and diagonal lines, they give the whole image an amazing sense of depth and rhythmic sound (“The Seine at Marly”, 1871).
Painting does not bring Pissarro a lot of money, and he barely makes ends meet. In moments of despair, the artist makes attempts to break with art forever, but soon returns to creativity again.
During the Franco-Prussian War, Pissarro lives in London. Together with C. Monet, he paints London landscapes from life. The artist's house in Louveciennes at that time was plundered by the Prussian invaders. Most of the paintings that remained in the house were destroyed. The soldiers spread the canvases in the yard under their feet during the rain.
Returning to Paris, Pissarro is still experiencing financial difficulties. Republic that came to replace
empire, changed almost nothing in France. The bourgeoisie, impoverished after the events connected with the Commune, cannot buy paintings. At this time, Pissarro takes under his patronage the young artist P. Cezanne. Together they work in Pontoise, where Pissarro creates canvases depicting the surroundings of Pontoise, where the artist lived until 1884 (“Oise in Pontoise”, 1873); quiet villages, roads stretching into the distance (“Road from Gisors to Pontoise under the snow”, 1873; “Red Roofs”, 1877; “Landscape in Pontoise”, 1877).
Pissarro took an active part in all eight exhibitions of the Impressionists, organized from 1874 to 1886. Possessing a pedagogical talent, the painter could find a common language with almost all novice artists and helped them with advice. Contemporaries said about him that "he can even teach how to draw stones." The master's talent was so great that he could distinguish even the subtlest shades of colors where others saw only gray, brownish and green.
A special place in the work of Pissarro is occupied by canvases dedicated to the city, shown as a living organism, constantly changing depending on the light and season. The artist had an amazing ability to see a lot and catch what others did not notice. So, for example, looking out of the same window, he wrote 30 works depicting Montmartre ("Montmartre Boulevard in Paris", 1897). The master passionately loved Paris, so he dedicated most of the paintings to him. The artist managed to convey in his works the unique magic that made Paris one of the greatest cities in the world. For work, the painter rented rooms on Saint-Lazare Street, Grands Boulevards, etc. He transferred everything he saw to his canvases (“Italian Boulevard in the morning, illuminated by the sun”, 1897; “Place of the French Theater in Paris, spring”, 1898; “ Opera passage in Paris).
Among his urban landscapes are works that depict other cities. So, in the 1890s. the master lived for a long time in Dieppe, then in Rouen. In paintings dedicated to various parts of France, he revealed the beauty of ancient squares, the poetry of lanes and ancient buildings, from which the spirit of bygone eras breathes (“The Great Bridge in Rouen”, 1896; “The Boildieu Bridge in Rouen at Sunset”, 1896; “ View of Rouen", 1898; "The Church of Saint-Jacques in Dieppe", 1901).
Although Pissarro's landscapes are not brightly colorful, their pictorial texture is unusually rich in various shades: for example, the gray tone of a cobblestone pavement is formed from strokes of pure pink, blue, blue, golden ocher, English red, etc. As a result, gray seems mother-of-pearl, shimmers and glows, making the paintings look like gems.
Pissarro created not only landscapes. In his work there are also genre paintings, which embodied interest in man.
Among the most significant, it is worth noting "Coffee with Milk" (1881), "Girl with a Branch" (1881), "Woman with a Child at the Well" (1882), "Market: a Meat Trader" (1883). Working on these works, the painter sought to streamline the stroke and introduce elements of monumentality into the compositions.
In the mid-1880s, already a mature artist, Pissarro, under the influence of Seurat and Signac, became interested in divisionism and began to paint with small colored dots. In this manner, such a work of his as “Lacroix Island, Rouen. Fog" (1888). However, the hobby did not last long, and soon (1890) the master returned to his former style.
In addition to painting, Pissarro worked in watercolor, created etchings, lithographs and drawings.
The artist died in Paris in 1903.
