Key Influences of the Impressionism Movement

The Impressionist movement is more often than not identified by five or six of the "masters"-- Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne and Degas -- as well as a host of others who take the spotlight. However, the first viewing of the Salon des Refusés in Paris in 1863 consisted of over 100 different artists and their vision of contemporary painting. The new techniques these visionaries developed from past theories enabled artists in the 1870s to create a new movement in art.

Paris in 1870 was a mecca for artists from around the world. Artists from the Americas studied alongside contemporaries from the Caribbean and the French countryside. One early Impressionist was Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). Born to a prominent citizen of Aix-en-Provence, he benefited greatly from the cultural institutions and connections in Aix. Early in his life he met Émile Zola who later, in 1861, paid for him to attend the Académie Suisse in Paris. It was there that Cézanne met Camille Pissarro, his self-acknowledged master. Cézanne developed a unique style that was often disparaged by his contemporaries, including his childhood friend, Zola. He worked tirelessly towards his goal of finding a medium between the looseness of Impressionism and the solid enduring works of the Old Masters. By the early 1900s his works had gained international status.

Although Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was born to an upper-class banking family, he received no resistance to his desire to be an artist. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts when he was 21 and left a year later to travel the wilds of the Italian landscape, where he discovered a passion for Italian painting. After meeting Manet in 1862, Degas focused his artistic eye on the life that was seething around him in all of its myriad incarnations. In 1869, Degas added sculpture to his list of accomplishments and represented his subjects with vitality. Japanese prints later caught his imagination, and he experimented with the printmaking process. Degas explored as many different mediums in art that came to his attention.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was raised in Lima as the son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole. Gauguin did not start out as an artist and never received formal training from a school as his contemporaries did. He joined the merchant Navy in 1865, and in 1872 he started a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris. However, he was so moved by the Impressionist exhibit he attended in 1874 that he decided to become a painter. Gauguin became an avid collector of Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir and Guillaumin and tried his own hand at painting. Pissarro took particular interest in Gauguin’s work and tutored him to "look for the nature that suits your temperament." In 1876, Gauguin had a work accepted into the Salon and met Cézanne through Pissarro. It was about this time that the bank he was working for hit a bad stretch; this gave him time to paint full time. Eventually he left Paris and moved to Denmark with his family, but Paris drew him back.

At 15, the Paris born Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927) started working in his uncle’s shop, studying drawing in the evenings. In 1860, he went to work on the Paris-Orléans railway, managing to paint in his spare time. Painting became Guillaumin’s passion, and in 1861 he entered the Académie Suisse, where he made the acquaintance of fellow Impressionists Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro, who remained friends for the duration of his life. Cézanne was taken by Guillaumin’s work and even did a portrait of his friend at Dr. Paul Gachet’s house. Guillaumin exhibited his works at the Salon de Refusés as well as most of the other Impressionist exhibitions. His fortunes improved when art dealer Auguste Portier decided to represent him, and when he won a large prize in 1891 from the Lotérie Nationale.
Guillaumin became friendly with Vincent van Gogh, whose brush strokes and love of color complemented his own. Guillaumin is one of the longest living painters from the Impressionist era and one of the most loyal to the movement and its ideals. He is also one of the least well-known of his contemporaries.

Edouard Manet (1832-83) was the reluctant leader of the Impressionist movement. Born to a magistrate, Manet never lacked for funds as did his contemporaries, Monet and Pissarro. In 1863, he submitted Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe to the Salon, but it was rejected, so he showed it at the Salon des Refusés. Its immediate success crowned Manet the leader of the Impressionist movement. Manet was not a revolutionary and did not court the title Impressionist; if anything, he fought against it, pointing out that his paintings presented historical themes, just in contemporary settings.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was born to a Parisian shopkeeper. He moved with his family to Le Havre when he was young. At 19, Monet moved back to Paris and studied at the Académie Suisse, where he met fellow artists. He spent time in the military in Algiers and eventually returned to Le Havre to continue his landscape paintings. In 1863, he went back to Paris to study and came into contact with Bazille, Renoir and Sisley. The four made a trip to Fountainebleau, where they developed a majority of the ideas that formed the cornerstone of Impressionism. Monet later expanded his horizons and was influenced by J.M.W. Turner’s landscapes and Japanese prints. Starting in 1881, the gallery Durand-Ruel provided Monet a reasonable income from the sale of his paintings. Monet was soon successful enough to move to Giverny, where he spent the remainder of his life.

Berthe Morisot (1841-95) was initiated into the world of art by her father, a top-ranking civil servant at the Cour des Comptes. He taught her to draw and to appreciate what art could offer her. She continued down this path with her sister Edma, taking painting classes with Joseph Guichard, a friend of Camille Corot.
By 1859, Morisot was well on her way to becoming an artist. In 1864, two of her works were accepted by the Salon, and she exhibited there regularly until 1873. In 1868 she made the acquaintance of painter Edouard Manet and later posed for some of his memorable works. Morisot married Manet’s brother Eugene in 1874. She exhibited regularly in the Impressionist exhibits throughout her lifetime. Her paintings gained acceptance from the masses before works of her male counterparts. Morisot also provided a social center for Impressionist painters. With a guest list including Degas, Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Pissarro and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, along with writers from the period, her Thursday salons provided a place of inspiration for many of the period’s most creative members. Near the end of Morisot’s life, after her husband died, she traveled widely and held a very successful exhibition at Boussod and Valadon.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was born in St. Thomas, West Indies of an affluent family; he was sent off to Paris to complete his education and it was there that he first discovered a talent for drawing. In 1855, he entered the Académie Suisse, where he met Monet. Pissarro’s paintings were regularly exhibited at the Salon between 1864 and 1869 under Corot’s tutelage. In 1863, his paintings were exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, and his work received recognition and praise from Jules Castagnary, an art critic and politician.
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Pissarro moved to London where a branch of his family lived and became acquainted with the dealer Durand-Ruel. After the war, he returned to Louveciennes to discover that only 40 of his 1,500 paintings had survived the occupation of the Prussians. Undaunted, Pissarro continued to work. He often was visited by Cézanne and discussed the plein air (open air) technique of painting that many Impressionists had come to use. Pissarro was very active in planning the first Impressionist exhibit in 1874 and helped plan many others.
Later in his life, however, Pissarro became dissatisfied with the Impressionist exhibitions and helped form an alternative group, L’Union, but resigned from this group right before their first exhibition in 1877. Pissarro changed his style once again, and, influenced by Seurat, he tried his hand at Pointilism. After a successful one-man show at Durand-Ruel’s, however, he reverted back to Impressionism and solidified his financial position. He bought a house in Eragny and spent the rest of his life exploring different artistic outlets, including engraving, watercolor and painting porcelain designs.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) enjoyed success at the École des Beaux-Arts and started to have reasonable success at the Salon. Around 1862, he became close to Sisley, Monet and Bazille, and became a regular at the Café Guberbois. In 1872, Durand-Ruel started buying his paintings. Renoir participated in the Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, but remained rooted in traditional painting which was popular with his well-known patrons. Renoir relocated to Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1905. By then, he was suffering from a variety of physical ailments, including partial atrophy of a nerve in his right eye and the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis. Renoir died on Dec. 3, 1919.

Alfred Sisley (1839-99) was born in Paris to English parents. His father, a trading merchant with connections to the United States, sent Sisley to London to learn business. Sisley returned to Paris in 1862 to pursue a career as an artist. His family supported his goal and sent him to learn his trade at Charles Gleyre’s studio. It was in this studio that he met fellow Impressionist painters Renoir, Monet and Jean-Frédéric Bazille. Sisley became a regular in the Impressionist scene, and his paintings reflected his growing involvement in the movement. During the Franco-Prussian war, Pissarro introduced him to the art dealer Durand-Ruel in London, and he became one of the dealer’s staple artists. However, as a result of the war, Sisley’s father lost all his money and the family was reduced to paupers, a state Sisley was confined to for most of his life. Sisley aligned himself with the Impressionist group and exhibited with them in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was born in a small village near Antwerp. Before Van Gogh found his passion for painting he tried his hand at several other careers. In about 1881 he found himself as a painter. Van Gogh was mostly self-taught and made his way from Holland to France, meeting various artists and learning from them. Near the end of his life Van Gogh worked to establish an artists studio in the south of France, but the only artist he was able to entice was Gauguin in 1888. Soon after, they quarreled and Gauguin left, leaving Van Gogh alone in Arles.