Posts Tagged ‘Impressionists’
A Bad Review Gave the Impressionists Their Famous Name!
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Claude Monet is perhaps the most famous of the Impressionists. But how did they get that name?
In 1874, there were strict standards for works hung in the official Paris Salon. They had to be classically painted, perfectly aligned and glass-smooth with no brush strokes – almost photographic. A group of artists who had a different style of painting had often been rejected by the Salon. Their art went in a different direction. It embodied small, fast, colorful brush strokes that gave merely the essence, the “impression,” of the subject. They decided to exhibit their works in an independent show. And their first show got a bad review.
Edouard Manet started the whole “Impressionist” art movement, although it wasn’t called Impressionism at that time. Manet’s work in the 1860′s greatly influenced Claude Monet and other artists.
The principal Impressionist painters who worked together and influenced each other were:
Claude Monet
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Camille Pissaro
Alfred Sisley
Berthe Morisot
Armand Guillaumin
Frederic Bazille
Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne also painted in an Impressionist style for a time.
These artists shared new approaches to art. They each had their own style, but generally they liked painting outdoors (called “en plein air”) with fast, short brush strokes. They thought this better captured the general “impression” of the scene.
The Paris Salon was the official art exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. From 1748-1890 it was the chief art event in the Western world. The Salon had accepted the works of some of these painters, but often they were rejected or poorly situated if accepted at all. So in 1874 several artists decided to have an independent exhibition of the works the Salon had refused.
The exhibition took place in April 1874, in the salon of the photographer Nadar.
Claude Monet hung his painting of a sunrise, called “Impression, soleil levant” or “Impression, sunrise.” It was painted with visible brush strokes, using the technique of broken color to give a visual sensation of light.
Art critic Louis Leroy ridiculed the show, using the title of Monet‘s piece as the title of his hostile review, “The Exhibition of the Impressionists.” He wrote:
“Impression – I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it… and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”
Although intended as a derogatory remark, the term “Impressionism” was adopted by the artists themselves. The Impressionists were radicals at the time who now had a name for their new art movement.
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