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Impressionism & Monet
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Impressionism & Monet
Art Concept #4 - Art 1
Essential Question:
What style of art is Impressionism and how did the artist Claude Monet impact the movement of Impressionism as well as alter the course of history?
The Beginnings
of Impressionism
The
Beginnings
of
Impressionism
Impressionism was a style of painting that featured every day subjects and emphasized every day subjects and emphasized the momentary effects (impressions) of light and color. Impressionism marked the first major artistic revolution since the Renaissance. Born in France in the early 1860s, it only lasted about 25 years, but it influenced
every artist that came after it.
Impressionism radically departed from tradition by rejecting classic Renaissance techniques like perspective, balanced composition, idealized people, and chiaroscuro.
Impressionism
DEFINITION: A French Artist movement, developed in the 1870s chiefly by Monet, Renoir, and Pissaro, in which artists painted fleeting impressions of city life and nature, focusing on the effects of natural light and color.
The Definition
of
Impressionism
Renaissance vs. Impressionism
Look at the two images. What are the defining qualities of each?
Renaissance
vs.
Impressionism
Renaissance--------->Impressionism
Early 1400s-Early 1600s 1860-1885
The Renaissance Style
The standards set by Renaissance painting stayed in place for hundreds of years up until 1860.
- Subjects were often religious - the Madonna (Virgin Mary) and the Christ child were a common theme or famous/wealthy people
- Art was supposed to have a recognizable story
- Balanced triangular composition - subjects are posed
- ideal of perfection
- Use of Chiaroscuro (extreme darks and lights) and careful brushstrokes
Renaissance
Titan
Madonna of the Cherries
Oil Paint on wood
1515
The Impressionistic Style
After 1860, artists were no longer interested in the same style of art of the Renaissance. The criteria changed, and at first seemed very strange & inappropriate at first:
- Subjects were everyday people - the girl combing her hair is completely casual. She is not famous and does not have a story to tell
- The girl is not posed, she is a real person, and not idealized but very human
- It is much more personal - it is as if the viewer is sitting alone in the room with her, talking quietly. She is almost unaware that she is being painted
- Impressionists tend to paint much looser with large brushstrokes and bright colors.
Impressionism
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Young Girl Combing Her Hair
Oil Paint on Canvas
1884
Characteristics of Impressionism
The
Characteristics
of
Impressionism
The goal of the Impressionists was to present an "impression", as if the artist was getting a brief glimpse of the scene: a sunset, a girl combing her hair, a ballet dancer striking a pose, a parade with horses and floats passing by, a pond full of water lilies, a cathedral at sunset. This was a revolutionary change in art.
Impressionism=
Color & Light
Color & Light
The Impressionists were fascinated with color and light. They observed that color is not a permanent characteristic of an object but it changes depending on what's around it. Human skin looks almost green under some fluorescent lights but at sunset it looks rich and orange-brown. If a person stands in a field of yellow flowers, that color reflects in the skin and the clothing of the person.
Light and colors change every few minutes as the sun and shadows move throughout the day. That is the sort of thing impressionists loved.
Claude Monet
1840-1926
Claude Monet
Claude Monet once said he wished he had been born blind and then gained his sight when he was an artist so he could truly paint what he saw, without any education or preconceptions. As it was, he had a revelation at age 18 when he began to paint outdoors. "Suddenly, it was as if a blindfold was torn away from my eyes," he said. "My destiny as a painter opened up to me."
Monet's Early Life
Monet began as an commercial artist and cartoonist. But, after traveling around France's north coast painting sunlit, water-drenched scenes, he became an advocate of painting nature directly to reflect his immediate impression of a given moment.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Monet and many other Impressionists suffered great poverty, trading his possessions for paint. In 1869 a visitor reported that Monet was desperate:"completely starved, his motivation gone". He would sell his early paintings at any price just to buy food. But, but 1886, things had changed. By the time the Impressionist's had their first New York Exhibit, Monet was an established success and could afford to build a special studio to do his larger paintings.
Monet's
early
years
Monet's Obsession
Monet:
Light
&
Color
Monet's devotion to the ideals of Impressionism meant he had both physical and economic difficulties. He was so obsessed with painting outdoors at particular times of the day that he hardly spent time indoors.
Monet's complusion to paint was so extreme he described himself as an animal endlessly turning a millstone. When his first wife was on her deathbed, instead of crying, he could not help painting, recording the blue, gray, and yellow streaks on her face as death approaches.
Weather
Even in bad weather, he hauled several giant canvases to the cathedral in Rouen, France replacing one canvas with the next every few minutes as the light changed. His goal was captured the slightest differences in color and light in each part of the day.
At one point he made 30 large paintings of haystacks in a field, through every kind of weather. In winter, he put down his easel in the snow and walked through ice floes in his hip boots, waiting patiently for just the right slant of light on the Seine river.
A visitor recalled: "On one of his paintings, he only worked for 7 minutes until the light changed just slightly. Then he took out his next canvas and worked on that."
Weather
Water
Monet loved the water, once remarking that he wished to be buried at sea. He painted the sea often. He even converted a flat-bottomed boat into a floating art studio where he painted stacks of pictures from sunrise to sunset. Once, when he painted on the beach during a storm, he was swept under by a wave.
Monet is probably best known for his series of paintings entitled "Water Lilies". In under 10 years, he created 75 different paintings on canvas depicting his beloved garden of water lilies that he planted himself. In all of the "Water Lilies" paintings, Monet focuses on the surface of the water. The sky with its white clouds are reflected in the water, so the blue of the water and the sky are one ".My finest masterpiece", he once said, "is my garden."