Impressionist art

1. Impressionism was an art movement

2. a group of Paris artists started the movement in 1874.

3. The term impressionism originated from an art critic, who commented that Monet’s painting was just an impression and that it looked un-finished. The impressionists adopted this term and decided to use it for their own benefit.

early Impressionist painters were radicals, breaking many of the rules of painting that had been set by earlier generations.

Up until the Impressionists, history had been the accepted subject

Impressionists painted subjects in life around them

they rejected attempts to portray ideal beauty, and instead sought the natural beauty of their surroundings

The impressionists captured a fresh and original vision that often seemed strange and unfinished to the general public.

Sometimes they painted outside instead of in their studios. Outside they were able to observe nature more closely and to capture the range of sunlight.

4. “Classic" Impressionist paintings used short, brush strokes.

5. impressionist paintings often have very textured thick paint.

6. Compositions are simplified and the emphasis is on the overall effect rather than on details.

Impressionist art is about ELBOW… 7. E Everyday life 8. L Light 9. B Brushstrokes 10. O Outdoor settings 11. W Weather and atmosphere

12. Most impressionist use space to show distance

Space or distance can be shown using the idea of- 13. Foreground- is the or closest part of the picture.

14. Mid ground is the mid distance or middle farthest part of the picture.

15. Background is the farthest part of the picture.

Important impressionist artists

Georges Seurat father of pointalism

What is Pointillism? Pointillism is a technique of painting in which a lot of tiny dots are combined to form a picture. The reason for doing pointillism instead of a picture with physical mixing is that, supposedly, physically mixing colors dulls them. Most of the painters of Seurat's time blended the colors to make a picture with a smoother feeling than Seurat's bright, dotty works.

Georges Seurat ( ) Georges Seurat was French painter who founded a painting style called pointillism. He began painting in the style of Impressionism but soon became more interested in scientific color theory. He is famous for using little dabs or points of pure bright color to paint. When viewed from a distance, the eye mixes the colors together Seurat was the father of pointalism

Seurat's famous "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (more commonly known as "Sunday in the Park"), which covered a wall (81 inches by 120 inches), took him two years to complete. He was known for amazing devotion and concentration. The dots in a pointillist painting can be as small as 1/16 of an inch in diameter! Based on these measurements, "Sunday in the Park" has approximately 3,456,000 dots!

Sunday in The Park, Seurat This painting has 3,456,000 dots!

Claud Monet painted big nature

Claud Monet background Mid ground foreground

Venice Twilight by Claude Monet

Claude Monet, Rocks At Belle-Ile, Port-Dormois, 1886.

Wild Poppies at Argentueil (1873) by Claud Monet

Water-Lilies (1914) Claud Monet

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted people partying

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre Renoir, ”Luncheon of the Boating Party”, 1881.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir ”La Moulin de la Galette”, 1876.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Oarsmen at Chatou, 1879.

Edgar Degas Painted Dancing women

Edgar Degas, ”Ballet Rehearsal”, Degas’s fascination with patterns of motion brought him to the Paris Opéra school of ballet. His observations of classes there became his main and most favorite subjects. Degas frequent cutoff figures and objects, such as the windows and the stairs indicate his interest in capturing single moments in time, like in photography, which is also used in the process of his paintings. He would take photographs to make preliminary studies for his works. The prominent diagonals of the wall bases and the floorboards carry the viewers eyes throughout the painting. The large, off-center empty space in the center creates an illusion that floor is continuous, thus connecting the viewer to the painted figures, as though viewers are on the same ground as the dancers. Degas, as well as other impressionist artists acquainted with the 1860s “greatly admired their spatial organization, the familiar and intimate themes, and the flat unmodeled color areas and drew much instruction from them.” Edgar Degas  Very diagonal compositions  Figures tend to run-off sides  Strong but natural light sources

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, 1874.

Edgar Degas, The Dance School, 1874.

Edgar Degas The Dancing Class

Mary Cassatt Painted women and children

In the Salon of 1874, Degas admired a painting by a young American artist, Mary Cassatt ( ), the daughter of a Philadelphia banker. “There”, he remarked, “is someone who feels as I do”. Degas befriended and influenced Cassatt, who exhibited regularly with the Impressionists. She had trained as a painter before moving to Europe to study masterworks in France and Italy. As a woman, she could not easily frequent the cafes with her male artist friends, and she was responsible for the care of her aging parents, who had moved to Paris to join her, two facts limiting her subject choices. Because of these restrictions, Cassatt’s subjects were principally women and children, whom she presented with a combination of objectivity and genuine sentiment. Works such as “The Bath” show the tender relationship between a mother and child. Like Degas’s “The Tub”, the visual solidity of the mother and child contrasts with the flattened patterning of the wallpaper and rug. Cassatt’s style in this work owed much to the compositional devices of Degas and of Japanese prints, but the painting’s design has an originality and strength all its own. Mary Cassatt, ” The Bath”, Mary Cassatt

Contrast how Renoir and Cassatt view a mother and child!

Mary Cassatt Mother and Child, c1889. Cincinnati Art Museum

Mary Cassatt Girl Arranging Her Hair, 1886.

Mary Cassatt Mother and Child, 1889.

Mary Cassatt Summertime, 1894.

Mary Cassatt Mother and Child, 1889.

Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party,

Children Playing on the Beach (1884) by Mary Cassat

Paul Cézanne Painted with geometric shapes

Paul Cezanne Cezanne began painting outdoors in 1872 and exhibited with the Impressionists a few times before breaking with them in Cezanne focused on arrangements geometric shapes He believed that there was hidden order in nature seen in geometric forms. His paintings are abstract, yet objects within them are recognizable. Cezanne's revolutionary theories and work lead to Cubism. Notice the geometric forms painted in the brushstrokes.

Do you see the abstraction in the trees?

Gardanne Paul Cézanne

Gardanne by Paul Cézanne

Montagnes en Provence (Mountains in Provence) by Paul Cézanne

Vincent VanGogh painted with bold color and a bold brushstrokes

Vincent VanGogh Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889

Self-Portrait 1889 by Vincent VanGogh

Starry Night 1889 by Vincent VanGogh

Landscape at Saint-Rémy 1889 by Vincent VanGogh

Irises 1889 by Vincent VanGogh

1.Seurat- pointalism 2.Monet- big nature 3.Renoir - people partying 4.Degas- Dancing women 5.Mary Cassatt- women and children 6.Cézanne- used geometric shapes 7.VanGogh- bold color and a bold brushstrokes