Realistic Impressions: Investigating Movements in the Visual Arts

A Real Impression

Joseph Decker Green Plums, c Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Still Life with Peaches Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer) Date: 1881 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 21 x 25 1/2 in. (53.3 x 64.8 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 Accession Number:

What’s in a Movement?

John La Farge The Last Valley - Paradise Rocks, Gaillard F. Ravenel and Frances P. Smyth-Ravenel Fund

The Valley of the Nervia Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny) Date: 1884 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 26 x 32 in. (66 x 81.3 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Theodore M. Davis Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915 Accession Number:

Move in Closer

The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny) Date: 1865 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 37 7/8 x 50 7/8 in. (96.2 x cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Gift of Sam Salz and Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, by exchange, 1964 Accession Number:

View near Rouen Artist: Richard Parkes Bonington (British, Arnold, Nottinghamshire 1802–1828 London) Date: ca Medium: Oil on millboard Dimensions: 11 x 13 in. (27.9 x 33 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Purchase, Gift of Joanne Toor Cummings, by exchange, 2001 Accession Number:

Behind the Movement

J. M. W. Turner’s Keelmen Heaving Coal by Moonlight

Eugene Delacroix’s 1846 The Abduction of Rebecca, a scene taken from Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel Ivanhoe

Sharpening your Eye

Note: Many paintings contain elements of more than one movement. For example, there may be elements of Realism among the Romantics or the Impressionists, so students shouldn’t focus on searching for a pure or perfect example of each movement. Instead, concentrate on which movement is the best fit for each painting and why. It might help to know the time periods of each of these movements, so that you might better understand that some of these movements were overlapping or very close in time period: – Romanticism: Early 1800s until around 1850 – Realism: Around 1840 until the late 19th century – Impressionism: In France: 1874 to about 1890; In America: mid- 1870s to the early 1910s

Thomas Eakins’ The Biglin Brothers Racing

John-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s The Eel Gatherers

Andre Derain’s Palace of Westminster

Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life: Youth

Edgar Degas’ The Dance Class

Gustave Courbet’s Le Bretonnerie in the Department of Indre

Winslow Homer’s Breezing Up a Fair Wind

John Constable’s The White Horse

Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair