Day 67 - Impressionism

During the 19th-century a new art movement began in Paris among a group of associated painters who influence each other, but were not part of an official "school".  Their independent showings brought them to prominence between 1870 and 1880.  The movement name was coined after the title of one of Claude Monet's paintings, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), 1872, by art critic Louis Leroy in a biting review.

The painting of the Impressionists is marked by small, visible, brush strokes of combined colors to create open compositions focusing on the movement and play of light on ordinary every day scenes portrayed at unusual angles.

Monet's images are filled with dynamic gestures of brush strokes combining unusual colors to create a hazy and brilliantly creative scene.  The attempt to add realistic details to the water almost seem like an after thought, but draw the eye into the action of the painting - the boat being rowed  in front of what looks like a line of boats moving through the water.

Mary Cassatt was the daughter of an American stockbroker and investor from Pennsylvannia.  She was talented painter and printmaker who spent her adult life in France.  She befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited work with the impressionists. Her image of a woman leaning forward in a theatre box is a departure from her usual realistic style, but she expertly used the Impressionist technique of applying complimentary colors together to create form, volume, value, light and shadow.

Edgar Degas did his most famous image of dancers - he also did beautiful pastels using the Impressionist technique.  He expertly applied the pigment in dashes or dots that combine divergent/complimentary/analogous colors to create the impression of shadows and light on the planes of the subjects in the image.  In his image Dancers at The Bar, 1888, he added dark outlines to the figures which make them pop off the canvas in a graphic way reminiscent of illustration.  There isn't a lot of detail; instead it is the atmosphere that strikes the viewer.
 

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), 1872.
The name of the Impressionist movement in art came from the title of this painting.

Mary Cassatt, Lydia Leaning on Her Arms (in a theatre box), 1879

Edgar Degas, Dancers at The Bar, 1888

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Claude_Monet,_Impression,_soleil_levant,_1872.jpg
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cassatt_Mary_At_the_Theater_1879.jpg
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edgar_Germain_Hilaire_Degas_072.jpg