Impressionism - Revolutionaries

Impressionism is from the19th-century. It is an art movement. This means there were a group of Artists who had similar ideas and became known for a particular style and/or way of thinking in their work.

It started during the 1870s and 1880s. Remember what was invented just before this time? We discussed it in class.

Impressionist paintings all have really visible brush strokes, they often show light and its changing qualities (think about the Haystacks by Claude Monet I keep showing you all and how you can see when it is a different time of the day), ordinary subject matter, trying to show movement in the works and using new angles in painting that had not been used before.

Claude Monet, 1890-91 Oil on canvas, 60 cm × 100 cm (23 5⁄8 in × 39 3⁄8 in). Location currently: Art Institute of Chicago “Wheatstacks; end of summer”	Claude Monet, 1890-91 Oil on canvas, 60.5 × 100.8 cm (23.8 × 39.7 in). Location currently:Louvre, Paris, France “Wheatstacks; end of summer” (again, he did a lot of these).

Remember your HOMEWORK: notice the sunset. Pick an object to watch outside your bedroom window and notice how the light/colour/look changes as the light fades.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts controlled everything about French art. The Salon (a panel of experts) selected the works considered suitable for the Académie each time they had an exhibition.

After Emperor Napoleon III (France's leader) saw the rejected works of 1863, he decided that people could look for themselves at how useless the Artists were who had been rejected. He wanted the people to come along and laugh at them.

This was called the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused). This actually backfired. People did come, more than usually attended the actual Salon, and quite a few liked what they saw. It was not the same old boring stuff they were used to seeing and showed things that were happening in people's everyday lives at the time.

In December 1873, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and several other artists founded the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs ("Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers") to exhibit their artworks independently.[9] ( this bit is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism and those links will take you to those Artist’s wikipedia pages)