1. Impressionism
Rejecting Renaissance perspective, balanced composition, idealized figures, and chiaroscuro.
Represented immediate visual sensations through colour and light
Impressionist’s main goal was to present an “impression,” or the initial sensory perceptions

2. Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.
Star performer…Manet
Subjects: Updated Old Masters themes, painted contemporary scenes with hard edges
Style:
Simplified forms with minimal modeling, flat colour patches outlined in black
Colours:
Dark Patches against light, used black as accent; early work: somber, late work: colourful
Advice:
Manet says he “simply seeks to be himself and no one else”
“Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, 1882

3. Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.
Star performer…Monet
Style:
Dissolved form of subject into light and atmosphere, soft-edges, classic Impressionist look
Subjects: Landscapes, waterfront scenes, series on field of poppies, cliffs, haystacks, poplars, rouen Cathedral; late work: near abstract water lilies
Advice:
“Try to forget what object you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever, Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you”
Colours:
Sunny hues, pure primary colours dabbed side by side (shadows were complementary colours dabbed side by side)
“Rouen Cathedral”,

4. Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.
Star performer…Renoir
Style:
Early: quick brushstrakes, blurred figures blended into hazy background; Late: more Classical style, solidly formed nudes
Subjects: Voluptuous, peach-skinned female nudes, café society, children, flowers
“Le Moulin de la Galette”, 1876
Colours:
Rich reds, primary colours, detested use of black- used blue instead
Advice:
“Paint with joy, with the same joy that you would make love to a woman”

5. Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.
Star performer…Degas
Style:
Offbeat angles with figures cropped at edge of the canvas, asymmetrical composition with void at center
Subjects:
Pastel portraits of human figures in stop-action pose: ballerinas, horse races, café society, laundresses, circus; late work: nudes bathing
Colours:
Gaudy hues side by side for vibrancy; early: soft pastel; late: broad smears of acid-coloured pastels
Advice:
“Even when working from nature, one has to compose.”
“Prima Ballerina”, 1876

6. Post-Impressionism 1880-1905 Concentration on formal,
near-scientific design /
Emphasized expressing emotions and sensations through light and colour

7. Post Impressionism French art movement 1880-1905
Included French artists Seurat, Gauguin, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Dutchman (working in France) van Gogh.
Styles were derived from the breakthroughs that the Impressionist made
USE OF BRIGHT COLOURS
UNDERSTANDING OF LIGHT
PLAY WITH PERSPECTIVE

8. 2 idea of how to create this substance in art were created
Post Impressionists want art to be valued as art not merely a way of capturing a moment in time
2 idea of how to create this substance in art were created
Concentrated on formal, near scientific design
Seurat: dot theory
Cézanne: colour planes
Emphasized emotions and sensations through colour and light
Gauguin, van Gogh and Lautrec
Cubism and Surrealism developed from these ideas

9. Georges Seurat 1859-91 (died at 31) Responsible for Pointillism
Consisted of applying dots of pure colour, unmixed, over the whole canvas. These dots would mix in the viewers eye to create the image
The effect created a grainy quality without defined hard edges
Pointillism was so time consuming that Seurat only finished 7 large paintings in 10 years

10. Seurat, “A Sunday on La Grange Jatte” 1884-86
2 years and 40 preliminary colour studies later…
Kept bright, unmixed colours of the impressionists and open-air themes
Created image based on geometric design and rigorous calculation of pattern

11. Method Painting:
Assigned certain emotions to different colours and shapes to elicit predictable response from the viewer
Warm colours/ upward line = action / merriment
Dark, cool colours/ descending lines = sadness
Mixing warm and cool colours/ vertical lines = calm
Seurat, “Le Cirque” 1891

12. Paul Cézanne
Started exhibiting with the Impressionist but out grew the style and enjoyed working alone
Became known as a recluse after showing his work in 1874 and being openly ridiculed as a fraud. When he emerged again in 1895 the younger artists praised his innovations in colour planes
Colour planes: approaching everything as though they are geometric shapes and colouring them one colour

13. Painted more than 30 versions of this landscape
Divided areas into colour planes
Used play of cool colours receding and warm colours advancing to create the illusion of depth
Cézanne, “Mont Sainte-Victoire”

14. Used contrasting colours/ complementary colours to make each fruit stand out from the others
Used wax fruit as models, as the real fruit rotted to fast for the number of times Cézanne would compulsively repaint his subjects
Cézanne, “Still Life with Apples and Oranges”

15. His last years he was obsessed with theme of nude bathers in an outdoor setting but broke from his traditional approach to painting.
He painted indoors looking at reproductions of painting by Rubens and El Greco as he was too shy to paint live models and feared his prudish neighbours’ suspicions
Cézanne, “Large Bathers” 1906

16. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Childhood injury caused his legs not to fully grow
Disassociated himself from high society due to his deformity (his family had a 1000 year history as the Counts of Toulouse)

17. Similar style to Degas (Impressionist) Subject matter:
Elevated lithographs and poster art to recognized art forms instead of media messaging tools
Similar style to Degas (Impressionist)
Subject matter:
figures in interior night scenes lit randomly by artificial light
Caricatured actors, entertainers, acrobats, and prostitutes to highlight certain characteristics
Caricatured self-portraits (very bitter and self loathing)

18. Seen from elbow height (makes viewer part of crowd)
Harsh lighting and use of colours shows the era’s surface merriment and the underlying melancholy
Painted in the music hall
Put himself in the painting (shorter bearded figure in middle ground)
Toulouse-Lautrec, “At the Moulin Rouge” 1892

19. Paul Gauguin
Was an average businessman with a family of 5 when he started painting on Sundays and had his first show in 1873 of very traditional imagery and style
By 1883 he had abandoned his family for his art and adapted a new style he called “savage instinct”

20. Driven by a desire for the unknown
Saw art as “an abstraction” of the reality we live in
Eventually he sought a more pure sensation untainted by “sick civilization
Moved to the South Seas where he lived in a native hut with a 13 year old mistress, painting very symbolic images with vivid hues, as well as wood sculptures and woodcuts

21. Gauguin followed his own advice, “Don’t copy too much from nature
Gauguin followed his own advice, “Don’t copy too much from nature. Art is an abstraction.” He stylized the Breton women witnessing a supernatural vision to make them symbols of faith. He painted the ground red, separating the “real” world of the women in the foreground from the “imaginary” world of Jacob wrestling with the angel by the diagonal tree painted blue.
Gauguin, “Vision after the Sermon, or Jacob Wrestling with an Angel,” 1888

22. Used flat planes, abstracted figures, and bright colours
“la Orana Maria” is native dialect for “I hail thee, Mary”
Gauguin said this was a greeting from the angel to Mary and Jesus and everything else was recast in the Tahitian terms. The composition he credits as an adaptation from Javanese bas-relief
Gauguin, “la Orana Maria” 1892

23. Vincent van Gogh
Didn’t start painting as an artist until he was 27
His brother Theo realized Vincent would never have a normal job and that painting made him happy, so he financially support his work.
Friends with Gauguin and convinced him to come to the South of France to work with him
Worked with Gauguin for 2 month, had an argument over a portrait Gauguin had done of him, and cut off his left ear
Stories say he gave it to a prostitute to give to Gauguin
Gauguin left on the first train the next day but the kept in touch through letters

24. Did many of his painting while admitted to Saint-Rémy asylum
When he painted he often did not break to eat, sometimes several days in a row
In his last 70 day alive he painted 70 canvases
Was often depressed at the lack of prospects and his dependence on his brother financially
Ended his own life after receiving a letter from his brother saying he was worried about money
Shot himself in a field after writing his brother saying “What’s the use?”
Last words he uttered “Who would believe that life could be so sad?”
Died 2 days later

25. Vincent Van Gogh Starry Night, 1889
Starry Night was painted while van Gogh was a patient at Saint-Rémy
Truly disliked realism and based his whole approach on unorthodox colour to show a fiery temperament
Self Portrait, 1889