Painting

Today in History: 1874 - Exhibition marks the beginning of the Impressionist movement


About 30 artists who were not accepted by the jury of the Salon de Paris Official expose themselves decide on April 15, 1874, his works in the studio of photographer Felix Tournachon, better known by his nickname Nadar. The exhibition, organized by "Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers," was composed of Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Guillaumin and Berthe Morisot. A few days later, the critic Louis Leroy in a review about the exhibition, spoke of "Impressionists" with reference to the title of a painting by Claude Monet: "Impression soleil levant" (Print of the Rising Sun.)
Earlier in 1863, Edouard Manet painted the most famous painting of his work. Would be exposed in the same year at the Salon des Refuses and critics bothered by the nudity of a woman eating lunch on the grass in the company of two men dressed. In this work, "Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, Manet breaks with academic techniques to use with the original characteristics of what would be the impressionism.
The Impressionist style of painting was characterized mainly by concentrating on the general impression produced by a scene or object and the use of primary colors without mixing them and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light.Moreover, the shadows are no longer opaque, disappear the light-dark contrasts. His subjects were landscapes, dances, scenes of daily life, portraits and self portraits, regattas, seascapes and inland urban scenes.
Impressionism was a major artistic movement, first in the fine arts and later in music (Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel) that developed mainly in France during the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, more concentrated between 1867 and 1886 by work of a group of artists who shared between them themes, techniques and exhibitions. The principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin and Frederic Bazille.
Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne also painted in an Impressionist style for a time in the early 1870s.The well known painter Edouard Manet, whose work of the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and others of the group, also approached the impressionism in 1873.
The founders of Impressionism were animated by the desire to break with the official art. The official theory that the colors should be placed in neat screen rather than mixing them on the palette would be respected by a few of them and only a short time. In fact, Impressionism was more a state of mind than a technique, so that artists from other areas could also be described as impressionistic.Many of these painters ignored the rule of simultaneous contrast as established by Chevreul in 1823. The terms "independent" or "outdoor painters" might be more appropriate to classify those that Impressionist artists carrying on the tradition inherited from Eugène Delacroix, who considered that the design and colors were a whole.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 broke these pioneers. Bazille was killed in Beaune-la-Rolande, Renoir was mobilized; Degas started as a volunteer; Cézanne retired to Provence, Pissarro, Monet and Sisley moved to London where they meet Paul Durand-Ruel. This stay in London was a big step in the evolution of Impressionism, both because they have established contact with 'dealers' as found in the painting of Turner's analysis of the light that marked.
Back in Paris, most of the painters went to work at Argenteuil (Monet, Renoir), Chatou (Renoir), Marly (Sisley), or on the river Oise (Pissarro, Guillaumin, Cézanne). Edouard Manet painted the Seine with Claude Monet who, under his influence, adopted the outdoor work.
The biggest difference between them lay in the attraction of color and taste for light. However, Berthe Morisot remained faithful to the lessons of Manet, Degas merged his admiration of Ingres and the Italian Renaissance painters, Cézanne tried to grasp the nature of Poussin, Claude Monet himself, in the tables "Terrasse au Havre" and "Les Femmes au jardin (1866, Louvre, Jeu de Paume halls), was far audacity to announce his future.