What Is Impressionistic Art?

Impressionism

The Impressionists were a loose association of French artists who began exhibiting their work together in the mid-1870s. They included Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet. The Impressionism movement takes its name from Monet's painting "Impression, Sunrise" which art critic Louis Leroy denounced as a sketch or impression rather than a finished painting. The Impressionists emphasized the effect of light on their subjects. They created vibrant paintings with pure unblended colors and short brushstrokes. The Impressionists typically depicted scenes of modern life such as middle class leisure activities, city-scapes, cafe scenes, workers, singers, theatrical performances, dances and concerts.

The Post-Impressionists were the generation of European artists who began working in the 1880s. They included Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat. Although these artists all worked in different styles, they shared some similar goals. Unlike the Impressionists whose work typically depicted the visual impression of a place or event, the Post-Impressionists created art that expressed emotions and depicted symbolic themes through definitive forms and simplified colors. Famous Post-Impressionist paintings include Van Gogh's "Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat," Gauguin's "Two Tahitian Women" and Seurat's "Circus Sideshow."

The French painters Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro created Neo-Impressionism in the 1880s. The Neo-Impressionist painters sought more scientific and rational ways of depicting color and light than the Impressionists. They based their work on a concept called divisionism in which color effects are created using a technique called pointillism. In pointillism, the artist places small dots of pure color on his canvas so that when the completed painting is seen from the proper distance, the colors seem more vibrant than a painting made with physically mixed colors. The short-lived movement was a major influence on other late 19th and early 20th century artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.

The Dutch-American painter, Willem de Kooning, began using the term Abstract Impressionism in the 1950s as a description for paintings that used the techniques developed by the Impressionists, such as Monet, but didn't represent a specific scene. In 1956, art critic Louis Finkelstein used the term to describe paintings by Philip Guston. In 1958, the British museum curator and art critic, Lawrence Alloway, used it for the title for his exhibit of paintings by Nicolas de Stael, Patrick Heron, Sam Francis and Bernard and Harold Cohen.