Impressionist artist
Key Influences of Impressionism and Chronology of Impressionism
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Claude
Oscar Monet,
(1840-1926), French Impressionist painter, who
brought the study of the
Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, but he spent most of his childhood in Le Havre. There, in his teens, he showed a talent for drawing caricatures, and in about 1858 he met the landscape painter Eugène Boudin, who encouraged him to paint out of doors rather than in the studio. In 1859, Monet committed himself to a career as an artist, and moved to Paris. During the 1860s he was associated with Édouard Manet, and with other aspiring French painters destined to form the Impressionist school—notably Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Working in the open air, Monet painted simple landscapes and scenes of contemporary middle-class society, and he began to have some success at official exhibitions. As his style developed, however, Monet violated one traditional artistic convention after another in the interest of direct artistic expression. His experiments in rendering outdoor sunlight with a direct, sketch-like application of bright colour became more and more daring, and he appeared deliberately to turn away from the possibility of a successful career as a conventional painter enjoying the support of the art establishment. In 1874
Monet and his colleagues decided to appeal directly to
the public by organizing their own exhibition. The
press derisively labeled them "Impressionists" because
their work seemed sketchy and unfinished (like a first
impression) and because one of Monet's paintings at
the exhibition bore the title Impression: Sunrise
(1872, Musée Marmottan, Paris). Monet's compositions
from this time were extremely loosely structured, and
the colour was applied in strong, distinct strokes as
if no reworking of the pigment had been attempted.
This technique was calculated to suggest that the
artist had indeed captured a spontaneous impression of
nature. During the 1870s and 1880s Monet gradually
refined this technique, and he made many trips to
scenic areas of France, especially the Mediterranean
and Atlantic coasts, to study the most brilliant
effects of light and colour possible. By the mid-1880s Monet, generally regarded as the leader of the Impressionist school, had achieved significant recognition and financial security. Despite the boldness of his colour and the extreme simplicity of his compositions, he was recognized as a master of meticulous observation, an artist who sacrificed neither the true complexities of nature nor the intensity of his own feelings. In 1890 he was able to purchase some property in the village of Giverny, not far from Paris, and there he began to construct a water garden (now open to the public)—a lily pond arched with a Japanese bridge and overhung with willows and clumps of bamboo. Paintings of the pond and the water lilies occupied him for the remainder of his life. Throughout these years he also worked on his other celebrated "series" paintings, groups of works representing the same subject—haystacks, poplars, Rouen Cathedral, the River Seine—seen in varying light, at different times of the day or seasons of the year. Monet continued to paint almost up to the time of his death, on December 5, 1926, at Giverny. |
transient effects of natural light to its most refined
expression.
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(1841-1919),
French Impressionist painter. He is recognized as one
of the greatest and most independent painters of his
period, and is noted for the brilliance of his colour
and the intimate charm of his work, which takes in a
wide variety of subjects. Unlike other Impressionists,
he was as much interested in painting the human figure
or portraits as he was in landscapes; unlike them,
too, he did not subordinate composition and form to a
fascination with rendering the effect of light.
Renoir was born in Limoges on February 25, 1841. As a child he worked in a porcelain factory in Paris, painting designs on plates and other tableware. In 1862-1863 he studied painting formally at the academy of the Swiss painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre in Paris. Renoir first exhibited his paintings in Paris in 1864. One of the most famous of all Impressionist works is Renoir's Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), an open-air scene of a café, in which his mastery of figure painting and in representing light is evident. Outstanding examples of his talents as a portraitist are Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jeanne Samary (1879, Musée d'Orsay). Renoir fully established his reputation with a solo exhibition held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris in 1883. In 1887 he completed a series of studies of a group of nude female figures known as the Bathers (Philadelphia Museum of Art). These reveal his extraordinary ability to depict the lustrous, pearly colour and texture of skin and to impart lyrical feeling and plasticity to a subject; they are unsurpassed in the history of modern painting in their representation of feminine grace. Many of his later paintings also treat the same theme in an increasingly bold rhythmic style. During the last 20 years of his life Renoir was crippled by arthritis; although unable to move his hands freely, he continued to paint by using a brush strapped to his arm. Renoir died at Cagnes, a village in the south of France, on December 3, 1919. Other notable paintings by Renoir include La Loge (1874, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London); Woman with Fan (1875) and The Swing (1875), both in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris; The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.); and Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895, Musée de Beaux-Arts, Rouen)—one of the many still life of flowers and fruit he painted throughout his life. Back to Top |
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Camille
Jacob Pissarro,
(1830-1903), French Impressionist painter,
whose friendship and support provided encouragement
for Pissarro was born in St Thomas, Virgin Islands, and moved to Paris in 1855, where he studied with the French landscape painter Camille Corot. At first associated with the Barbizon School, Pissarro subsequently joined the Impressionists and was represented in all their exhibitions. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), he lived in England and made a study of English art, particularly the landscapes of J. M. W. Turner. For a time in the 1880s Pissarro, discouraged with his work, experimented with Pointillism; the new style, however, proved unpopular with collectors and dealers, and he returned to a freer Impressionist style. A painter of sunshine and the scintillating play of light, Pissarro produced many quiet rural landscapes and river scenes; he also painted street scenes in Paris, Le Havre, and London. He was an excellent teacher, counting among his pupils and associates Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, his son Lucien Pissarro, and the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt. Pissarro was a prolific artist; many of his paintings, watercolours, and graphics hang in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris. z Back to Top |
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Alfred Sisley,
(1839-1899), French landscape painter, born in Paris
of English parents. He was
"Sisley, Alfred," Microsoft®
Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 |
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