IMPRESSIONISTIC PERIOD

1863-1900

Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons(Salon de Paris and Salon de Refuses) , and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired.

Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting instant. To achieve this effect, many Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the streets and countryside, painting en plein air.-

Synopsis

The Impressionist Exhibitions and the Painting Revolution In 1863, at the official salon (Salon de Paris), exhibits the

all-important event of the art world, a large number of artists were not allowed to participate, leading to public outcry .

The same year, the Salon de Refusés was formed in response to allow the exhibition of works by artists who had previously been refused entrance to the official salon. Some of the exhibitors were Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, and the early iconoclast Édouard Manet.

Édouard Manet was among the first and most important innovators to emerge in the public exhibition scene in Paris, the 1863 exhibition caused a scandal, due largely to the unconventional themes and styles of works such as Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863), which featured clothed men and nude women enjoying an afternoon picnic.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)

• Painted by EDOUARD MANET, when the work was presented at the 1863 Salon des Refuses it caused an uproar due to both its aesthetic rendering and its "racy" content. The painting, which depicts the picnic of two fully clothed men and two nude women, defies the tradition of the idealized female subject of Neo-Classicism in the positioning of the woman on the left who gazes frankly out at the viewer- she is confrontational, rather than passive.

Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877, Gustave Caillebotte

L'Absinthe, 1876, Edgar Degas

In a Park, 1874, Berthe Morisot

Fog, Voisins, 1874

The Boulevard Montmartre, Afternoon, 1897

Girl with a Hoop, 1885, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

At the Opera, 1880, Mary Cassatt

Vetheuil in the Fog, 1879, Claude Monet

Alfred SisleyFog, Voisins, 1874

Sisley focused almost expressly on representations of the atmosphere while diminishing the importance of the human figure, if they appeared at all. Fog, Voisins demonstrates this general preoccupation with the visual perception of the natural world through the application of rough, clearly visible brushstrokes and the blurry, almost ethereal rendering of color and form. Here, a woman, serenely picking flowers, is almost entirely obscured within the dense fog that eclipses the pastoral scene. Like much of Sisley's work, the protagonist of the painting is nature and the visual reception of it.