impressionism (approximatly btwn 1867 & 1886)

What is “Modern”?

• Common Use: Refers to the present, up-to-date, contemporary.

• In Art History: A specific period, roughly spanning from the 1860s to the mid-20th century.

  • The term distinguishes the art of this period from prior traditions.

  • It reflects shifts in society, culture, and artistic practices during this transformative time.

• Modern Art: Aimed to break away from academic conventions, often emphasizing innovation and originality in subject matter and technique.

Characteristics of Academic Art Before Modernity

Represented by artists like William Bouguereau.

• Example: Le Repos (Rest), 1879.

  • Painted according to classical standards:

    • Carefully modeled figures with no visible brushstrokes.

    • Gradual shading & idealized features.

• Figures were distinctly detailed & central to the composition.

  • Purpose: To idealize beauty & adhere to established norms.

Emergence of Impressionism

Claude Monet: Camille au jardin, avec Jean et sa bonne (1873).

• Unlike academic art, Monet’s:

  • Brushstrokes are visible.

  • Faces are less detailed & not the central focus.

  • Asymmetric composition shifts attention from figures to the light & atmosphere.

Focus: The psychological center (the face) of academic art is replaced by the dynamic play of light & color.

• Monet exemplifies how Impressionism moved away from rendering precise details to capturing the fleeting impressions of a scene.

Claude Monet, Camille au jardin, avec Jean et sa bonne, 1873

REAL subject is the light not the people(the atmosphere)

• brushwork;

• faces are not detailed;

• shadow cast by parasol on the woman = not in the light, not the first figure you notice;

• faces are obliterated as a possible focus;

• asymmetric composition;

• the center is almost empty,

• redirecting the viewer’s attention;

• psychological center of academic art = face

Notion of Modernity

Derived from Charles Baudelaire’s essay The Painter of Modern Life:

• Described modernity as an attitude toward the present, embracing change, beauty, & urban experiences

• Art should capture the ephemeral & ever-changing aspects of contemporary life, especially in cities where movement & innovation are most pronounced.

• Implications:

  • Artists must engage with modern subjects & innovative techniques.

  • Modernity requires continuous renewal of style & subjects, inspiring the avant-garde movements

    • New means ==> persistent focus for artists in late 19th-early 20th (leading to avant-garde movements)

The Rise of Industrialization and Urbanization

By the mid-19th century, cities like Paris underwent radical transformations:

• Haussmannization: Modernization of Paris with wide boulevards and urban planning.

• Increased movement of people and goods fostered exposure to diverse cultures and ideas.

Artistic Centers

Paris (1860s–1930s): The epicenter of artistic innovation, replacing prior cultural hubs:

• Florence in the 15th century.

• Rome in the 17th century.

==> became the birthplace of avant-garde mvmts that challenged academic norms

Paris & the Academy

Académie des Beaux-Arts (1648): Controlled the direction of art & established strict rules for artists.

• Annual exhibitions (the “Salon”) determined which works were deemed valuable enough to be showcased

• The Academy upheld a hierarchy of genres:

  • History painting (mythological, religious, or allegorical subjects on large canvases) was the highest genre.

  • Still life & landscapes were considered minor genres.

  • Artists who adhered to this hierarchy gained prominence & opportunities.

Official system of art (academic art)

Academy of Art —> Taste prescribed by the academies 

very conservative —> established rules that stayed roughtly the same for 200yrs

Rules/Principles of Academic Art:

1. Hierarchy of genres (History painting mythological, religious, or allegorical subjects on large canvases was the highest genre still life & landscapes were considered minor genres)

2. Mimesis: Art must imitate the physical world as closely as possible.

3. Idealization: Representations were perfected according to classical beauty, proportions, & harmony.

   • Example: Raphael’s Madonna del Prato.

   • Nature was idealized rather than depicted as it appeared to the eye.

   • Shadows & contrasts were softened to emphasize unity & beauty.

All these academic rules were based on a series of preconceived ideas 

Preconceived idea of what things ought to look like (knowledge over vision)

Break from Academic Standards (Artists Ex)

• Gustave Courbet: A Burial at Ornans (1849–1850).

  • Depicted an ordinary funeral on a monumental scale, challenging the notion that grand canvases were reserved for historic or mythological subjects.

  • scandal as funerals = not considered dignified subject 4 this scale

• Eugène Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus (1827).

  • Prioritized vibrant color over meticulous drawing, undermining the academic principle of "knowledge over vision."

• Édouard Manet: The Luncheon on the Grass (1863).

  • Presented a stark juxtaposition of nude & clothed figures in a modern setting, defying classical ideals.

Photography & Its Impact

Key Innovations:

• Nicéphore Niépce: Early experiments in the 1820s, developing a technique to fixate images (heliography)

• Jacques Daguerre: Co-invented the daguerreotype (1839), the first publicly presented photographic method.

  •  darkened room with a very tiny home which allows the light to enter & projects the outside world in an inverted image on the inside

• By the 1860s (when impressionists started to paint) portable & affordable photographic methods allowed widespread use

Significance:

• Photography replaced painting as the most mimetic representation of reality

  •  If photography does it better then what is the function of painting ?

• This shift forced painters to redefine the purpose of their art, leading to Impressionism’s focus on perception, light, & subjectivity

Impressionism is almost photographic vocabulary 

• Charles Baudelaire’s "The Painter of Modern Life":

  • Advocated for art that captured the transient beauty of modern life.

  • Urged artists to focus on the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent elements of urban existence.

  • link btwn impression & imprint, leaving an imprint on the retina —> impressionism

• Introduced the question on the function of the painting

  • Photography now does it better so what else can painting do ?

Impressionism Development by Paris based artists in the 1860s

• 1862- Monet meets Bazille, Sisley & Renoir in Gleyre’s teaching atelier as individuals who did not conform to academic standards in art

Tensions Between Tradition & Innovation

• The Academy’s rigidity alienated artists who sought to depict modern life and its fleeting qualities.

• The rise of Salon des Refusés (Exhibition of Rejects, 1863) offered a platform for nonconforming artists like Édouard Manet.

  • often mocked

  • put in place by Napoleon who wanted to let public decide of the works themselves

  • Inspired them to put on their own exhibition bc they realized you can also exhibit paintings outside of the salon

Anonymous Cooperative Society of painters

• 1874 : 1rst exhibition of the Anonymous Cooperative Society of painters

  • 1st « impressionist » exhibition w/ Paintings by Eugène Boudin, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Armand Guillaumin, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir & Alfred Sisley.

• Not an uniform style of painting which is why they did not give themselves their name (only anonymous cooperative society of painters)

• Some did become famous impressionist painters

• 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 & 1886 

Origin of the term “Impressionism”

Claude Monet Impression, Soleil Levant → led Louis Leroy in his review of the 1rst impressionist exhibition in satirical journal CHARIVARI *

led art critic to use the term impressionist to describe them bc of this title ⇒ adopted by other critics

• “They did not render the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape.” 

Techniques and Innovations in Impressionism

“Plein Air” Painting (OUTDOORS) —> artists paint on the spot

• Development:

  • Enabled by the invention of portable tools:

    • The paint tube (1841).

    • The box easel

  • Artists painted outdoors to capture natural light & atmospheric conditions.

  • Claude Monet’s Femmes au jardin (1866):

    • Monet dug a trench to paint without altering perspective.

    • Shadows contained blues & reds, reflecting the surrounding light.

    • Emphasized light & color over fine detail.

Impressionism’s Aesthetic Revolution

Key Characteristics:

• Visible brushstrokes and loose, spontaneous application of paint.

• Focus on light, color, and atmosphere over precise details.

• Everyday life and landscapes became central subjects.

Conceptual Revolutions and Scientific Discoveries (up to the 1800s)

1/Light Theories

2/Color Theories

3/Goethe’s Experiments

4/ William Turner – A Proto-Impressionist

1/ Light Theories:

• Corpuscular Theory: Until the 1800s, light was believed to consist of particles moving through space.

• Vibration Theory: new theory:  light understood as a vibration or wave phenomenon occurring between particles → crucial for Impressionists & influenced later art movements

2/ Color Theories:

• Recognized as a result of light waves, emphasizing perception rather than fixed properties of objects.

• foundational to Impressionism & later art movements.

3/ Goethe’s Experiments:

• Through prisms, Goethe demonstrated that objects exist through perceived reflected colors, challenging the notion of a priori vision (independent of experience aka depending  on light interacting with objects and our perception)

• Objects exist not independently but through the perception of their reflected colors

• His ideas influenced William Turner and the Impressionists

4/ William Turner – A Proto-Impressionist

• A proto-Impressionist inspired by Goethe, Turner emphasized atmosphere & light over subjects.

• Example: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth shows the dominance of atmosphere/ environment over the boat.

Turner’s Experiments & Light Studies

Focused on light’s interaction with objects, reflections, & fog , showing how atmosphere shapes perception.

• filtering through objects & its effect on perception

• reflections & refractions on liquids ==> how substances modify what we see

• painting fog (notably in Industrial Revolution London) ==> shows how atmospheric substances alter human vision

Impressionist Light & Motifs:

• Monet: Series like Rouen Cathedral & The Saint-Lazare train station series captured the fleeting effects of light over time

  • Train represents Monet’s modern life because it was a big part of the Industrial Revolution → A lot of fog, intermediary substance btwn painter & viewer (Turner also painted a fog)

  • It is about how the image touches the painters’ retina

  • rented space facing Cathedral & worked on multiple canvases throughout the day to reflect different light conditions

  • Rouen Cathedral Series: 30 paintings of the west portal from slightly different viewpoints, emphasizing the fleeting nature of light.
    

• Pissarro: Highlighted light’s variability in urban scenes (Boulevard Montmartre).

  • exemplified light's constant change over time

Advancements in Color Theory

Goethe’s Contributions

• dinstinguishsement btwn colors:

  • chemical color (material based)

  • physical color (modified by atmospheric conditions)

  • physiological color (shaped by individual eye physiology— not all of us have same color distinguishement)

• succesive contrast vs simultaneous contrast

  • Successive contrast: Perception of a color influenced by the preceding color.

  • Simultaneous contrast: 2 colors simultaneously modify each other’s perceptions (concept further developed by Chevreul)

    • complementary colors intensify each other when placed side by side -enhancing harmony of chaos

Simultaneous Contrast

1/ Complementary colors intensify each other when placed side by side, enhancing harmony or chaos in a painting

2/ Inspired Impressionists to depict light intensity by strategically juxtaposing complementary colors.

• when 2 complementary colors are put next to one another both colors will look more intense →  yellow & red 4eg. red is not as intense as when you put red & green together; also used by others

• Crucial for the impressionists because they try to describe light or light intensity in a painting

Claude Monet, Impression, Rising Sun, 1872

• tries to recreate the vibration of the sunlight by putting orange & blue next to each other, he wants to prescribe the phenomenon of vibration which describes light 

• In order to increase the sensation of light & recreate the color vibration that hits our eyes because the wavelengths of blue + orange are very different & our eye will record that movement; touches of unblended pure colors next to each other

Auguste Renoir Study: Torso, effect of sun 1875-76 

• perceived color (actual object color) vs local color (by eye)

• in traditional art shasow what is grey but her it is with a bit of blue

• color of ski,n and shadow compelemnt each other (blue and orange)

• painting looks brighter as impressionists used light undercoating so i doesn’t darken colors & didn’t use varnish after painting which darkened it

• notion of the eye is important; light is always changing ==> want to recreate perception of our eyes leading to time being an important factor bc perception would change also linked to memories

Claude Monet notion of smoke– 

• He tries to transcribe an act of viewing, trying to experiment how we view/look at smth

• You could say that the impressionists tried to paint the act of viewing itself 

• We could understand as a complete renewal of viewing 

• - They intended to renew the vision that we have of an object of the world around us by noticing how our vision works 

• Part of a whole concept because our view of how we view something being changed (philosophy, photography) this was expressed in the choice of modern subjects 

• New vision of the world, new way of choosing objects 
  

New Paris architecture 

> Industrial revolution subjects, new Paris architecture (Hausmann was responsible from Paris architectural renewal AKA renovation of Paris directed by prefect Baron Hausmann between 1853 & 1870), depiction of leisure activities that was now accessible to a wider range of persons, intimate subjects of the everyday life (The Cradle)

> Artistic dignity to their subjects 

> Introduced by idea of photography; camera allows to transcribe the world differently than we are used to 

> Edgar Degas: suggests that the scene continues beyond the painting & movement, that a painter has caught just an instant 

Gustave Caillebotte, On the Pont de l’Europe, 1876-77

> In shot / off camera: comes from the instantaneity of photography → we are contemplating an act of vision

> Character that seems to be the sample subject sees more than the viewers; we are contemplating an act of vision by viewing the person that’s viewing smth. 

> Paintings showing unexpected angles like the views from above (comes from photography) [For eg: Gustave Caillebotte, Boulevard vue d’en haut, c.1880]

> Blurred vision because of capturing movement 

Gustave Caillebotte, Vue prise à travers un balcon, 1880 

• Used of blurred motif to convey movements 

• They try to be as subjective as possible 

• Reality depends on how we look

CONCLUSION

> Impressionism ⇒ tries to transcribe reality as it is seen as truthfully as possible & want to paint what they really see with their eyes

> They have understood that it is a truer rendering of reality when we don’t transcribe every minor detail: reality is what we see of the world (from philosophy)

> Want to depict what is around them; the appearance of the eternal world. 

> Through Optical realism → try to be as objective as possible in the depiction of the world, but because it comes from their perception they add a subjective note. Reality doesn’t exist before the experience but it depends on the way we look & on everyone’s own physiology

> The transition between the art of the previous time

The idea of imprinting:

> imprinting something on the retina; the aim of the impressionists to paint what they see 

> The idea of impression: a subjective aspect; introducing the subjective view that inspired them

BASICALLY IMPRESSIONISM… 

Introduced the new attitude of the artist → being a rebel against the academy & the rules established by the bourgeois world

> After going against academicism develops the subjectiveness of art & evolves 

> Possibility to put unmixed colors right on the canvas : here the paint is added directly unmixed color / unblended bc want the eye to reconstitute the color– each color brings a vibration that will suggest light intensity intensity

> Most of them came from a wealthy family & abandoned it (some)