Overview

Impressionism is arguably the most famous and beloved art movement in history, but when it began in Paris in the 1870s, it was radical and hated. Critics called it “unfinished wallpaper.” The artists (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro) rebelled against the rigid rules of the Academy, which favored historical myths and smooth finishes. They wanted to paint modern life as it actually looked to the eye.

Core Idea

The core idea is capturing the moment. The world is not static; it is constantly changing due to light and atmosphere. To capture a fleeting sunset or steam from a train, you have to paint fast. You can’t blend colors smoothly; you have to put down quick dabs of pure color and let the viewer’s eye blend them from a distance.

Formal Definition

A style of painting that originated in France in the 1860s, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, especially in terms of the shifting effect of light and color.

Intuition

Look at a tree. The Academy said: “Trees are green with brown trunks. Paint the outline, then fill it in.” The Impressionist said: “I don’t see a ’tree.’ I see flashes of yellow light, blue shadows, and shimmering movement.” They painted the sensation of seeing, not the intellectual concept of the object.

Examples

  • Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise: The painting that gave the movement its name. It is a hazy, orange-and-blue view of a harbor. A critic mocked it as just an “impression,” and the name stuck.
  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party: A scene of modern Parisians eating and flirting. It captures the dappled sunlight filtering through the awning onto the tablecloth and faces.
  • Edgar Degas: Focused on movement, specifically ballet dancers and racehorses. He used “snapshot” compositions (cutting figures off at the edge) influenced by the new invention of photography.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s just pretty pictures: It was a scientific investigation into optics and color theory. They were obsessed with how complementary colors (like orange and blue) make each other vibrate.
  • They were amateurs: They were highly trained but chose to unlearn the academic rules to see the world freshly.
  • En Plein Air: “In the open air.” The practice of painting outdoors (made possible by the invention of paint in tubes) rather than in a studio.
  • Flâneur: The “stroller” or urban observer. The Impressionist was a flâneur, wandering the modern city (boulevards, train stations) to observe life.
  • Post-Impressionism: The movement that followed (Van Gogh, Cézanne), which kept the bright colors but rejected the “messiness” in favor of more structure or emotion.

Applications

  • Photography: Impressionism was a response to photography. Since cameras could record reality perfectly, painting had to do something else—record subjective perception.
  • Music: “Impressionist Music” (Debussy, Ravel) uses washing waves of sound and tone color rather than strict melody, paralleling the visual style.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Lack of Structure: Critics complained the paintings looked “boneless” or structureless. Cézanne famously wanted to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums.”
  • Social Blindness: They mostly painted the leisure of the middle class, ignoring the poverty and grit of industrial Paris.

Further Reading

  • Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism. 1946.
  • Clark, T.J. The Painting of Modern Life. 1984. (A Marxist reading of the movement).
  • Nochlin, Linda. Realism. 1971.