Impressionist painters Impressionism

French and foreign Impressionist painters

Les peintres impressionnistes vont révolutionner la fin du 19e siècle. Un mouvement est né l’impressionnisme. L’impressionnisme c’est quoi? Qui sont ces peintres impressionnistes ? Qui est le peintre impressionniste qui a donné le nom à ce mouvement? Pourquoi parler de peintures, de tableaux? Un antiquaire est amené, un jour, à acheter des œuvres peintes, dessinées, croquées.., évidemment pas aussi prestigieuses que celles-ci. Le site d’antiquités de Catherine est documenté par des œuvres qui forment l’œil.

Berthe Morisot and her secret influence on modern art

Berthe Morisot now occupies a singular place in the history of art: both a major figure of Impressionism and a source of secret influence on…

First exhibition of the Impressionist painters at the photographer Nadar

Translating the lived sensation, the impression of the moment, the earth, the water, the sky, the light. Here is the list of some of these early Impressionist painters. Forming the Société anonyme of painters, engravers and sculptors, they organized their own exhibition in the workshop and studio of the famous photographer Nadar.
Here is the list:

1. Berthe Morisot
2. Edgar Degas
3. Claude Monet
4. Camille Pissaro
5. Paul Cézanne
6. Adolphe-Félix Cals
7. Félix Bracquemond
8. Giuseppe De Nittis
9. Auguste Renoir

In 1874, the future rested in the hands of a small group of artists. In fact, these Impressionist painters were unhappy with the retrograde and academic climate that prevailed in the painting salons. They are called: Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissaro, Cézanne, Cals, Bracquemont, De Nittis, Renoir and Berthe Morisot… They all knew each other.

Following consecutive refusals to organize another Salon des Refusés in 1867 and 1872 and having found no place to officially exhibit their painting, they transformed the workshops of the photographer Nadar on the boulevard des Capucines into a gallery. Edmond Renoir, brother of one of them, was tasked with preparing the exhibition catalogue. Gathering works by thirty artists including the precursor Eugène Boudin, he presented a canvas by Claude Monet under the title Impression, Sunrise. “ Impression ”! However, the word unleashed the laughter of a society steeped in materialism. “It is not a subject for a painting,” asserted the critic Charivari, who railed against this first exhibition of the Impressionist painters.

Edgar Degas impressionist

Edgar Degas : Complete biography, major works and legacy of a master of Impressionism Edgar Degas (Hilaire Germain Edgar de Gas), born in Paris on…

A movement was born: Impressionism

However, the word would set a trend by becoming the rallying cry of this group of artists. A movement was born amid oppositions and difficulties of all kinds. Difficulties that would prove to be the richest, most fruitful experience of figurative art. In a few years, painting would become the beacon of this era. Afterwards, it would allow the mutation of ideas and aesthetic judgments at the dawn of modern times. The novelty of Impressionism lies in the style and pictorial technique that separates forms and colors to impose other nuances on things.

“It is thus that these Impressionist painters would scandalize their contemporaries with their famous blue shadows. The recent optical discoveries of the chemist Chevreul, his experiments on colors and chromatic effects give a scientific foundation to these artists’ researches.

Edouard Manet : discover why he revolutionized painting in the 19th century

In the history of 19th-century art, few names resonate as strongly as Édouard Manet. In Paris, at a time when academic painting still triumphs, he…

Balance, the emotion of the Impressionist Painter

The eye and the hand, Manet told his friend the poet Mallarmé, are the only instruments the painter has. The eye perceives, the hand translates its vision onto the canvas, without any formal, literary or cultural prejudice coming between it and living reality.

“The balance thus obtained between optical reception and the emotion it provokes will be the highest conquest of Impressionism. Moreover, the artist’s attitude toward the world and the spectacle of life, his autonomy acquired before the subject, will make him the painter of movement, of light and of blur, leaving the artificial atmospheres of studios to turn toward the ever-renewed scenes of daily life. To the suspended atmosphere of Daubigny‘s landscapes, the Impressionists maintain their warm vision. Where light gives life to things, transforms them to bewilder the mind, combines with air and water, ineffable elements and, for that reason, so loved by these painters, to make them play in subtle harmonies over infinite variations.

Impressionist painter movement and flight

To Corot’s contemplative quietude, they opposed the fleeting immediacy of the direct relationship with nature, replacing Courbet’s objective image with an interpretation at once visual and sentimental of aspects of a world in perpetual change. This is the great theme that this fin de siècle set against triumphant materialism. Movement, flight! “To flee, over there, to flee…”, wrote Mallarmé and, with him, an entire era sprang forward. Rodin discovered movement in sculpture. Debussy expressed the elusive in his music. Poetry devoted itself to free verse. Philosophical thought revealed, thanks to Bergson, the value of intuition and time. The Impressionist painters would combine this time with light to open the way to this great liberating movement: Impressionism.

The precursors of Impressionism : Johan Barthold Jongking, Eugène Boudin

One cannot evoke the history of Impressionism without recounting the personalities of some painters. Their work stands on the margins of this great movement. This is the case of Boudin and of Jongking who can be considered precursors.

Eugène Boudin has been said to be the painter of the skies of his native coast of Honfleur. It is true that he knew how to render, better than others, the thousand nuances of the azure above the sea according to the hour and the season and the lively animation of the beaches then populated by greatcoats and crinolines.

These themes, very fashionable among artists, are simple and treated with spontaneity in an emotionally moved and sincere participation in daily life. Before Monet, Eugène Boudin knew how to translate the transparency of a sky, the vaporous immensity of water and the tangle of masts in the setting sun of a misty estuary. If Boudin brought dimension and freshness to the classical theme of the Marine, Jongkind sought in the spectacle of nature an answer to his inner inquietude. He divided his tormented life between Paris, the Norman coasts and the Dauphiné. He pursued the landscape tradition of his native Holland.

Le Salon des Refusés 1863

In 1863, the Salon des Refusés opened at the request of Napoleon III, considering the official jury too strict. Thus, this salon welcomed painters who were victims of the jury’s partiality. One can notice a harmony of milky tones signed by an American. It is James Whistler. A passionate admirer of Japanese art. He introduced great freedom in painting with regard to the perspective angle. What the Impressionist painters would widely use, raising the horizon line to the upper edge of the canvas or lowering it very low following the example of photographic effects.

He succeeded in expressing in his paintings and particularly in his portraits a very subtle balance. Subtlety made of formal elegance with learned and precious accords between the tones of a single color. In 1867, seeing their canvases still refused by the Salon jury, Alfred Sisley, Bazille, Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Monet signed a petition to obtain a space for their works, but to no avail.

Birth of Impressionism

A new approach and conception of painting was born. From the 1850s onward, the influence of Japanese prints with their scenes of life, flat areas of vivid and sharp colors, off-center compositions was a source of inspiration for this new generation of painters who wanted to shake up academicism. Furthermore, the influence of photography in its early beginnings is undeniable. The very long exposure times of photographic cameras to capture subjects in motion blurred forms into an aesthetic mesh or made them disappear. Photographic framings were innovative. All these visual effects would be imitated by these future Impressionist painters to claim the present instant, the felt sensation, spontaneity.

At its beginnings Impressionism was widely contested by the public and the critics. The preceding movement was called realism. Courbet was one of its most significant representatives.

The birth of Impressionism is the beginning of a long series of articles on the Impressionist painters. It will evoke the Impressionist painting through its famous artists. These articles on Impressionism are the result of extensive documentation through art books.