Grove Art: Thematic Guide
Impressionism & Post-Impressionism
Introduction
Both
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism refer to influential artistic
movements arising in late 19th-century France. Impressionists
rejected the system of state-controlled academies and salons in
favor of independent exhibitions, the first of which was held in
1874. They painted contemporary landscapes and scenes of modern
life, especially of bourgeois leisure and recreation, instead of
drawing on past art or historical and mythological narrative for
their inspiration. Interested in capturing transitory moments, the
Impressionists paid attention to the fleeting effect of light,
atmosphere and movement. They continued the break that the Realists
began from the illusionist tradition by emphasizing the paint on
the surface of the canvas, flattening the sense of perspective
through a lack of tonal modeling, and using daring cropped
perspectives which were influenced by Japanese prints. Confronting
nature and modern city life directly, the Impressionists differed
from their antecedents because they painted en plein air (in
the open air) and used a palette of pure colors. The term
Impressionism is used to describe a group of painters living in
Paris who worked between c. 1860 and 1900. These artists,
such as Frédéric Bazille, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe
Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Mary
Cassatt, sparked an international group of followers and
revolutionized Western conceptions of painting.
Post-Impressionism is a term used to describe the reaction in the 1880s against Impressionism. It was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat. The Post-Impressionists rejected Impressionism’s concern with the spontaneous and naturalistic rendering of light and color. Instead they favored an emphasis on more symbolic content, formal order and structure. Similar to the Impressionists, however, they stressed the artificiality of the picture. The Post-Impressionists also believed that color could be independent from form and composition as an emotional and aesthetic bearer of meaning. Both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism include some of the most famous works of modern art such as Monet’s Waterlilies, a Series of Waterscapes and van Gogh’s Starry Night. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism continue to be some of the most well-known and beloved of artistic movements.
