Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). Critic Louis Leroy inadvertently coined the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Impression, Sunrise

The influence of Impressionist thought spread beyond the art world, leading to Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Characteristics of impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, light colors, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, and unusual visual angles.

Impressionism also describes art done in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

Radicals in their time, early impressionists broke the picture-making rules of academic painting. They began by painting driven by colours, rather than by line, drawing from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also began from unique working methods, such as painting outside of the studio for subjects such as the still life and portrait. The techniques of impressionism gradually grew more specific to the movement, and encompassed what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing. They painted "en plein air" (outdoors) rather than in a studio as was the custom, capturing the momentary and transient aspects of sunlight.

By the last years of the 19th century, the public came to believe that these artists had captured a fresh and original vision that was highly skilled, even if it did not meet with approval of the artistic establishment. The impressionists looked to beauty in candid poses and compositions, in the play of light and in a bright and varied use of colour.

Impressionist paintings feature short, "broken" brush strokes of pure, untinted and unmixed colour. Compositions are simplified and innovative, and the emphasis is on overall effect rather than upon details. The brushstrokes increasingly became visible and part of the composition, as opposed to the then current technique of having an almost smooth surface of the canvas without visible brush strokes. Impressionism rose at the same time that other painters were also exploring methods of painting that moved away from the subjects, forms and norms that dominated the art market at that time, for example Edvard Munch.

By placing the center of artistic creation as the eye that views the subject, rather than the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which would come after, including Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and individual painters that were not part of an exact school, such as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne.

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