Early Modern Art

The Impressionists

Salon des Refuse’s

• The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects”, is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

• It should be taken into account that during this time, Paris was a breeding ground for artist of all forms, poets, artists, sculptors, etc. Paris was the place to be, and the capital of the art world, any artist that wanted to be recognized, at that time, was required to have exhibited in a Salon, or gone to school in France. Being accepted into these Salons was a matter of survival for some artist; reputations and careers could be started or broken, based solely on the acceptance into these exhibits.

“Exhibition of the Rejects”

• As early as the 1830’s, Paris art galleries had mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. The clamorous event of 1863 was actually sponsored by the French government. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, far more than usual. "Wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints," said an official notice, Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon.

“Exhibition of the Rejects”

• Many critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such now-famous paintings as Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and James McNeill Whistler's Girl in White. But the critical attention also legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting. Encouraged by Manet, the Impressionists successfully exhibited their works outside the Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the prestige and influence of the Paris Salon had waned.

Impressionism Overview

• Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Impressionism Overview

• Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colours, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugène Delacroix. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the modern world. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes had usually been painted indoors. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed colour, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense colour vibration.

Impressionist techniques

• Short, thick strokes of paint are used to quickly capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details. The paint is often applied impasto.

• Colours are applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible, creating a vibrant surface. The optical mixing of colours occurs in the eye of the viewer.

• Grays and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. In pure Impressionism the use of black paint is avoided.

• Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive applications to dry, producing softer edges and an intermingling of colour.

• Painting in the evening to get effets de soir - the shadowy effects of the light in the evening or twilight.

Impressionist Techniques

• Impressionist paintings do not exploit the transparency of thin paint films (glazes) which earlier artists built up carefully to produce effects. The surface of an Impressionist painting is typically opaque.

• The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection of colours from object to object.

• In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly painted with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness and openness that was not captured in painting previously. (Blue shadows on snow inspired the technique.)

Early Impressionism

• Édouard Manet (French pronunciation, 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883, was a French painter. One of the first nineteenth century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

• His early masterworks The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia engendered great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.

Edouard Manet

The Holy Family, 1518

Louvre Museum Paris, France

Edouard Manet - Luncheon on the Grass.

Luncheon on the Grass

• Exhibited with other impressionist paintings at the Salon des Refuses by Manet in 1863, this painting earned the impressionists a great deal of media attention. Whilst a nude in a classical setting was considered acceptable, one in a contemporary setting was not. Luncheon on the Grass caused a public scandal and was savaged by the critics.

Edouard Manet Olympia

Olympia

• Though Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) sparked controversy in 1863, his Olympia stirred an even bigger uproar when it was first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon. Conservatives condemned the work as "immoral" and "vulgar." Journalist Antonin Proust later recalled, "If the canvas of the Olympia was not destroyed, it is only because of the precautions that were taken by the administration." However, the work had proponents as well. Émile Zola quickly proclaimed it Manet's "masterpiece" and added, "When other artists correct nature by painting Venus they lie. Manet asked himself why he should lie. Why not tell the truth?"

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

(July 11, 1834 – July 17, 1903)

• He was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it combined both aspects of his personality—his art was characterized by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative. Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler titled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His most famous painting is the iconic Whistle’s Mother, the revered and oft parodied portrait of motherhood. A wit, dandy, and shameless self-promoter, Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his artistic theories and his friendships with leading artists and writers.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

• Painted in 1862 it is a portrait of his Irish model and girlfriend, Jo Hiffernan: The White Girl (Symphony in White No. 1). Shown in London first and then in Paris, it provoked a buzz of irrelevant interpretation. The expressionless young woman in innocent white, standing on a wolfskin with a lily in her hand (that floral emblem of the Aesthetic Movement), was declared to be something except what she actually was: a model posing in Whistler's studio to give him a pretext to paint shades of white with extreme virtuosity and subtlety. The story was that there was no story. It was Whistler's first sally against the narrative insistence in French and (especially) British art, though by no means the last.

Claude Monet

• Claude Oscar Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air (in the open air) landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

Impressionists

• Impressionism is a term that came to designate the work of a diverse circle of artists who shared a desire for artistic independence and an allegiance to modern expression. Formed in the last quarter of the 19th century, this small, diverse group included Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro.

Impressionists

• Over the span of 12 years (1874-1886) these artists mounted eight exhibitions, and although they quickly became known as the Impressionists, they never adopted an official name. Their Impressionist styles remained distinctive and diverse, but they shared common goals in their rejection of traditional academic ideals and their support of a modernist vision based on the experience of visual sensations and a personal point of view.

Impression Sunrise1872 Oil on canvas

• Haystacks is the title of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The primary subjects of all of the paintings in the series are stacks of hay that have been stacked in the field after the harvest season. The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series begun the autumn of 1890 and continued through the following spring, using that year's harvest. Some use a broader definition of the title to refer to other paintings by Monet with this same theme. The series is known for its thematic use of repetition to show differences in perception of light across various times of day, seasons, and types of weather. The subjects were painted in fields near Monet's home in Giverny, France.

Haystack Snow Effect: 1891

Haystacks at Giverny in The Evening Sun: 1888

Haystack, Sunset (1890/91)

Haystacks: End of Summer

Haystacks on a Foggy Morning1892

Water Lilly Series

• Water Lilies (or Nympheas) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926). The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

Claude Monet - Water Lilies (1916)

Water Lily Pond

Water-Lilies, Evening Effect

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

• Auguste Renoir and Monet worked closely together during the late 1860s, painting similar scenes of popular river resorts and views of a bustling Paris. Renoir was by nature more solid than Monet, and while Monet fixed his attentions on the ever-changing patterns of nature, Renoir was particularly entranced by people and often painted friends and lovers. His early work has a quivering brightness that is gloriously satisfying and fully responsive to what he is painting, as well as to the effects of the light.

Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

• The Moulin de la Galette was one of 21 works shown by Renoir at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Every Sunday afternoon young people from the north of Paris contributed in the dance-hall and in the courtyard behind it in fine weather. Most of the figures in Renoir's work, rather than being habitués of the Moulin were in fact portraits of his friends, with the occasional professional model posing for thin. The scene which Renoir has painted in this work is not an authentic representation of the clientele of the Moulin, but rather a scrupulously organized series of portrait.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Luncheon of the Boating Party

• The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. As you can see the main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth both work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.

Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81

• The painting captures an idyllic atmosphere as Renoir's friends share food, wine, and conversation on a balcony overlooking the Seine at the Maison Fournaise restaurant in Chatou. Parisians flocked to the Maison Fournaise to rent rowing skiffs, eat a good meal, or stay the night.

• The painting also reflects the changing character of French society in the mid- to late 19th century. The restaurant welcomed customers of many classes, including businessmen, society women, artists, actresses, writers, critics, seamstresses, and shop girls. This diverse group embodied a new, modern Parisian society.

Degas--Impressionist

• Degas did not fit nicely into the Impressionist definition. His style was not that of short dabs and dashes in an attempt to capture light. Instead he was lumped with the Impressionists because they shared the same philosophy: to move artistic expression towards modernism. Contrary to his “fellow” impressionists, Degas had never really wanted to be completely detached from the past, and his artistic challenge was always to build a link between the “old” and the “new”. Out of the group, Degas was the strangest. His contemporaries labeled him as eccentric and bizarre and made no efforts to gain any sympathy either from strangers or his critics.

Edgar Degas

Degas-Ballet

• In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision.

Degas--Ballet

• The dancer/ballet images produced by Degas combined all of his interests: the instantaneous glimpse of figures in action; the indoor, controlled lighting, often coming from below as in foot-lights; and the view from peculiar vantage points, such as from wings, balcony boxes, or from below the stage. All of these features were used by Degas to enhance his candid glimpses of dancers working at their craft.

Degas Dancer Taking a Bow

Berthe Morisot

• Berthe Morisot was the third daughter of a prominent and wealthy government official.

• The family moved to Paris in 1852, where her father served as the Judicial Adviser to the Auditor's Office. This powerful position, with its high salary and important political associations, allowed the Morisots to lead a privileged lifestyle as members of the upper middle class.

Berthe Morisot

• Raised accordingly, Morisot and her sisters were provided tutors for languages and literature and, in 1857, art lessons. Morisot and her older sister Edma quickly developed both a passion and a high level of skill in drawing and painting. Alongside her sister, Morisot copied masterpieces at the Louvre and painted out of doors under the direction of well-known landscape painter Camille Corot. She first exhibited her paintings at the prestigious annual Salon in 1864, and her work was shown there regularly through 1873.

Berthe Morisot

Mary Cassatt

• The daughter of an affluent Pittsburgh businessman, whose French ancestry had endowed him with a passion for that country, she studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and then travelled extensively in Europe, finally settling in Paris in 1874. In that year she had a work accepted at the Salon and in 1877 made the acquaintance of Degas, with whom she was to be on close terms throughout his life. His art and ideas had a considerable influence on her own work; he introduced her to the Impressionists and she participated in the exhibitions of 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886, refusing to do so in 1882 when Degas did not.

Mary Cassatt

The Child's Bath Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt