IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism And The Post Impressionists

Nowadays everybody knows that Impressionist paintings are very colourful and filled with life.

Yet when the Impressionist paintings were first exhibited in France they were met with great derision and hoots of laughter.

This is because the style of painting was completely new to the public and unlike anything that the Victorians were used to.

The cartoonists made merry and wrote satires about the new style of painting.

They considered it to be crude and rough and not very precise. At the time people were very conventional about art and had expectations from their artists.

Impressionism was the first great modern movement in art.

Because of this it’s had a large struggle to convince the art buying public.

Later in the next century, when Cubism appeared, it found easier acceptance because of the great struggle that had preceded it.

Impressionist painters such as Renoir, Manet, Monet, and Degas embarked on a new artistic journey.

The result was a wonderful collection of light filled pictures.

Many of these paintings were done outside in the fresh air to capture the moving speckles of sunlight and flickering shadows.

This is very important to the paintings as in a studio you would not get these speckles of sunlight.

Painting outdoors made it possible for the artists to capture fleeting effects, caused by changes in the weather and light.

It made it possible to catch movement in nature.

Colours were greatly enhanced by the light and reflections.

Shadows which are normally seen as black or grey, now became sprinkled with little colours.

The art critics were puzzled by the way the brush strokes were not smoothly blended in.

Instead the canvases were covered with small touches and strokes of colour.

So two colours that would have been mixed by a traditional artist, were now kept separate and unmixed. This created a whole new way of paintings.

So Impressionist art had a feeling of capturing momentary effects.

Many impressionists preferred to use light pastel colours which gave their paintings a gay, sunny and happy feeling.

During the 1870s Renoir created some of his most enchanting works with sun dappled scenes.

The artist Degas liked to paint in pastels of dancers and used indefinite textures.

Many impressionist paintings seemed slightly blurred as if the seer has lost his glasses and cannot see the world clearly.

Also when rain is pouring down against the window and I look out of the window I see everything as blurred and looking like an impressionist painting.

I sometimes wonder if this is where they got the idea from.

Post impressionist artists include Cezanne and Van Gogh.

Van Gogh also used many small rough brush strokes in vivid colour and not blended in.

The effect is really striking and makes the paintings jump alive.

Sadly Van Gogh did not live very long as he shot himself in a field of corn.

I have been inspired by Van Gogh and his pictures of paintings of shoes which I have used in my lost and found study of shoes.

These artists were great pioneers of their day as they were doing something completely different.

Many of these artists were  mocked and ridiculed for not conforming to the classical and realistic style of painting.

In the old fashioned style of painting the