French impressionism: general characteristics, main masters. The Artistic Principles of Impressionism The Birth of Impressionism

There is an opinion that painting in impressionism occupies not such an important place. But impressionism in painting is the opposite. The statement is very paradoxical and contradictory. But this is only at first, superficial glance.

Perhaps, that for all the millennia of existence in the arsenal of mankind of artistic fine art, nothing more new, revolutionary has appeared. Impressionism is in any modern art canvas. It can be clearly seen both in the frames of the film of the famous master, and among the gloss of a ladies' magazine. He penetrated music and books. But once upon a time everything was different.

Origins of Impressionism

In 1901, in France, in the Combarel cave, rock paintings were accidentally discovered, the youngest of which was 15,000 years old. And it was the first impressionism in painting. Because the primitive artist did not set out to read morality to the viewer. He simply painted the life that surrounded him.

And then this method was forgotten for many, many years. Mankind has invented others And the transfer of emotions by the visual method has ceased to be topical for him.

In some ways, the ancient Romans were close to impressionism. But part of their efforts were covered in ashes. And where Vesuvius did not reach, the barbarians came.

Painting was preserved, but began to illustrate texts, messages, messages, knowledge. She ceased to be a feeling. It has become a parable, an explanation, a story. Look at the tapestry from Bayeux. He is wonderful and priceless. But this is not a picture. This is seventy meters of linen comics.

Painting in impressionism: the beginning

Slowly and majestically developed painting in the world for thousands of years. New colors and techniques appeared. Artists learned the importance of perspective and the power of a colorful hand-drawn message on the human mind. Painting became an academic science and acquired all the features of monumental art. She became clumsy, prim and moderately pretentious. At the same time, refined and unshakable, like a canonical religious postulate.

Religious parables, literature, staged genre scenes served as the source of plots for the paintings. The strokes were small and inconspicuous. Glazing was introduced into the rank of dogma. And the art of drawing in the foreseeable future promised to ossify like a primeval forest.

Life was changing, technology was rapidly developing, and only artists continued to churn out prim portraits and smoothed sketches of country parks. This state of affairs did not suit everyone. But the inertia of the consciousness of society was overcome with difficulty at all times.

However, the 19th century was already in the yard, having long passed its second half. Social processes that used to take centuries now took place before the eyes of one generation. Industry, medicine, economics, literature, and society itself developed rapidly. It was then that painting showed itself in impressionism.

Happy birthday! Impressionism in painting: paintings

Impressionism in painting, like paintings, has an exact dating of its birth - 1863. And his birth was not without curiosities.

The center of world art then, of course, was Paris. It annually hosted large Parisian salons - world exhibitions and sales of paintings. The jury, which selected works for the salons, was mired in petty internal intrigues, useless squabbles and stubbornly oriented towards the senile tastes of the then academies. As a result, new, bright artists, whose talent did not correspond to ossified academic dogmas, did not get to the exhibition in the salon. During the selection of participants in the exhibition in 1863, over 60% of applications were rejected. These are thousands of painters. A scandal was brewing.

Emperor-gallery

And the scandal erupted. The inability to exhibit deprived a huge number of artists of their livelihood and access to the general public. Among them are the names now known to the whole world: Monet and Manet, Renoir and Pizarro.

It is clear that this did not suit them. And there was a big buzz in the press. It got to the point that on April 22, 1863, Napoleon III visited the Paris Salon and, in addition to the exposition, purposefully examined some of the rejected works. And I did not find anything reprehensible in them. And even made this statement in the press. That is why, in parallel with the great Paris Salon, an alternative exhibition of paintings with works rejected by the salon jury was opened. It went down in history under the name "Exhibition of Outcasts".

So, April 22, 1863 can be considered the birthday of all modern art. Art that has become independent of literature, music and religion. Moreover, painting itself began to dictate its terms to writers and composers, for the first time getting rid of subordinate roles.

Representatives of impressionism

When we talk about impressionism, we first of all mean impressionism in painting. Its representatives are numerous and multifaceted. Suffice it to name the most famous: Degas, Renouan, Pizarro, Cezanne, Morisot, Lepic, Legros, Gauguin, Renoir, Thilo, Forain and many, many others. For the first time, the Impressionists set the task of capturing not just a static picture from life, but snatching a feeling, an emotion, an inner experience. It was an instant cut, a high-speed photograph of the inner world, the emotional world.

Hence the new contrasts and colors, hitherto not used in painting. Hence the large, bold strokes and the constant search for new forms. There is no former clarity and slickness. The picture is blurry and fleeting, like a person's mood. This is not history. These are feelings that are visible to the eye. Look at them. They are all a little cut off in mid-sentence, a little fleeting. These are not paintings. These are sketches brought to ingenious perfection.

The emergence of post-impressionism

It was the desire to bring a feeling to the fore, and not a frozen temporal fragment, that was revolutionary and innovative for that time. And then there was only one step left to post-impressionism - a trend of art that brought to the fore not emotion, but patterns. More precisely, the transfer by the artist of his inner, personal reality. This is an attempt to tell not about the outside world, but about the inner one, through the way the artist sees the world. perception.

Impressionism and post-impressionism in painting are very close. And the division itself is very conditional. Both currents are close in time, and the authors themselves, often the same, as a rule, moved from one style to another quite freely.

And yet. Look at the work of the Impressionists. Slightly unnatural colors. A world familiar to us, but at the same time a little fictional. This is how the artist saw it. He does not give us a nature contemporary to him. He just bares his soul a little for us. The soul of Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Denis, Gauguin and Seurat.

Russian impressionism

The experience of impressionism, which captured the whole world, did not leave Russia aside either. Meanwhile, in our country, accustomed to a more measured life, not understanding the bustle and aspirations of Paris, impressionism could not get rid of academicism. He is like a bird that took off on takeoff, but froze halfway into the sky.

Impressionism in Russian painting did not receive the dynamism of the French brush. On the other hand, he acquired a dressed up semantic dominant, which made him a bright, somewhat isolated phenomenon in world art.

Impressionism is a feeling expressed in the form of a painting. He does not educate, does not demand. He claims.

Impressionism served as the starting point for Art Nouveau and expressionism, constructivism and avant-garde. All modern art, in fact, began its report on April 20, 1863. Impressionist painting is an art born in Paris.

The term "impressionism" arose with the light hand of the critic of the magazine Le Charivari Louis Leroywho titled his feuilleton about the Salon of the Les Misérables "Impressionist Exhibition", taking as a basis the title of the painting by Claude Monet "Impression. Rising sun" (fr. Impression, soleil levant). Initially, this term was somewhat disparaging, indicating a corresponding attitude towards artists who wrote in a new "careless" manner.

Impressionism in painting

origins

By the mid-1880s, impressionism gradually ceased to exist as a single direction, and disintegrated, giving a noticeable impetus to the evolution of art. By the beginning of the 20th century, the trend away from realism gained momentum, and a new generation of artists turned away from impressionism.

The emergence of the name

IMPRESSIONISM(French impressionnisme, from impression - impression) - a trend in art of the late 1860s - early 1880s, the main purpose of which was to convey fleeting, changeable impressions. Impressionism was based on the latest discoveries in optics and color theory; in this he is in tune with the spirit of scientific analysis characteristic of the late 19th century. Impressionism manifested itself most clearly in painting, where special attention was paid to the transfer of color and light.

Impressionism appeared in France in the late 1860s. Its leading representatives are Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley and Jean Frederic Bazille. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas exhibited their paintings with them, although the style of their works cannot be called impressionistic. The word "Impressionism" comes from the name of Monet's painting. Impression. Rising Sun(1872, Paris, Marmottan Museum), presented at the exhibition in 1874. The name implied that the artist conveys only his fleeting impression of the landscape. Now the term "impressionism" is understood more than just the subjective vision of the artist: as a careful study of nature, primarily in terms of color and lighting. Such a concept is essentially the opposite of the traditional understanding, dating back to the Renaissance, of the main task of painting as the transfer of the form of objects. The goal of the Impressionists was to depict instantaneous, as it were, “random” situations and movements. This was facilitated by the asymmetry, fragmentation of compositions, the use of complex angles and cuts of figures. The picture becomes a separate frame, a fragment of the moving world.

Landscapes and scenes from urban life - perhaps the most characteristic genres of impressionistic painting - were painted "en plein air", i.e. directly from nature, and not on the basis of sketches and preparatory sketches. The Impressionists peered intently at nature, noticing colors and shades that are usually invisible, such as blue in the shadows. Their artistic method was to decompose complex tones into their constituent pure colors of the spectrum. Colored shadows and pure light quivering painting were obtained. The Impressionists applied paint in separate strokes, sometimes using contrasting tones in one area of ​​the picture, the size of the strokes varied. Sometimes, for example, to depict a clear sky, they were smoothed out with a brush into a more even surface (but even in this case, a free, careless painting style was emphasized). The main feature of Impressionist paintings is the effect of lively flickering of colors.

Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet in their work preferred landscapes and urban scenes. Auguste Renoir painted people in the bosom of nature or in the interior. His work perfectly illustrates the tendency characteristic of impressionism to blur the lines between genres. Pictures like Ball at the Moulin de la Galette(Paris, Museum D "Orsay) or Rowers breakfast(1881, Washington, Phillips Gallery), are colorful memories of the joys of life, urban or rural.

Similar searches for the transmission of the light-air environment, the decomposition of complex tones into pure colors of the solar spectrum took place not only in France. The Impressionists include James Whistler (England and the USA), Max Lieberman, Lovis Corinth (Germany), Joaquin Sorolla (Spain), K.A. Korovin, I.E. Grabar (Russia).

Impressionism in sculpture implies a lively free modeling of fluid soft forms that creates a complex play of light on the surface of the material and a sense of incompleteness. In the poses, the moment of movement, development is accurately captured; the figures seem to have been taken with a hidden camera, as, for example, in some works by E. Degas and O. Rodin (France), Medardo Rosso (Italy), P.P. Trubetskoy (Russia).

At the beginning of the 20th century in painting, new trends were outlined, expressed in the rejection of realism and the appeal to abstraction; they caused younger artists to turn away from Impressionism. However, Impressionism left a rich legacy: primarily an interest in color issues, as well as an example of a bold break with tradition.

Impressionism is a direction in painting that originated in France in the 1860s and largely determined the development of art in the 19th century. Masters recorded their fleeting impressions, sought to capture the real world in its mobility and variability in the most natural and unbiased way. The central figures of this trend were Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Pizarro, Renoir, and Siley, and the contribution of each of them to its development is unique. The Impressionists opposed the conventions of classicism, romanticism and academism, asserted the beauty of everyday reality, simple, democratic motives, achieved lively authenticity of the image, tried to catch the “impression” of what the eye sees at a particular moment. The most typical theme for the Impressionists is the landscape, but they also touched on many other topics in their work. Degas, for example, depicted races, ballerinas, laundresses, and Renoir depicted charming women and children. In impressionistic outdoor landscapes, a simple, everyday motif is often transformed by an all-pervasive moving light, bringing a sense of festivity to the picture. In some methods of impressionist construction of composition and space, the influence of Japanese engraving and partly photography is noticeable. The Impressionists were the first to create a multifaceted picture of the everyday life of a modern city, capturing the originality of its landscape and the appearance of the people inhabiting it, their way of life, work and entertainment.

Monet Claude Oscar One of the founders of impressionism, in his paintings, the artist Monet, from the second half of the 1860s, sought to convey the variability of the light-air environment, the colorful richness of the world by means of plein-air painting, while maintaining the freshness of the first visual impression of nature. From the name of Monet's landscape “Impression. Rising Sun” (“Impression. Soleil levant”; 1872, Musée Marmottan, Paris) was the name of Impressionism. In his landscape compositions (“Capuchin Boulevard in Paris”, 1873, “Rocks in Etretat”, 1886, both in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow; “Field of Poppies”, 1880s, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), Monet recreated the vibration of light and air with the help of small separate strokes of pure color and additional tones of the main spectrum, counting on their optical alignment in the process of visual perception. In an effort to capture the diverse transitional states of nature at different times of the day and in different weather, Monet created in the 1890s a series of paintings-variations on one plot motif (a series of paintings “Rouen Cathedrals”, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow , and other collections). The late period of Monet's work is characterized by decorativeism, the increasing dissolution of objective forms in sophisticated combinations of color spots.

Degas Edgar Starting with strict historical paintings and portraits (The Bellelli Family, circa 1858), in the 1870s Degas became close to the representatives of impressionism, turned to the image of modern urban life - streets, cafes, theatrical performances (Concorde Square, circa 1875; "Absinthe", 1876). In many works, Degas shows the characteristic behavior and appearance of people, generated by the peculiarities of their life, reveals the mechanism of a professional gesture, posture, movement of a person, his plastic beauty (“Ironers”, 1884). In the affirmation of the aesthetic significance of people's lives, their everyday activities, the peculiar humanism of Degas's work is reflected. The art of Degas is inherent in the combination of the beautiful, sometimes fantastic, and the prosaic: conveying the festive spirit of the theater in many ballet scenes (“Star”, pastel, 1878). The artist, as a sober and subtle observer, at the same time captures the tedious everyday work hiding behind the elegant spectacle (“Dance Exam”, pastel, 1880). Degas' works, with their strictly calibrated and at the same time dynamic, often asymmetric composition, accurate flexible drawing, unexpected angles, active interaction of figure and space, combine the seeming impartiality and randomness of the motive and architectonics of the picture with careful thoughtfulness and calculation. Late works by Degas are distinguished by the intensity and richness of color, which are complemented by the effects of artificial lighting, enlarged, almost flat forms, and the constraint of space, which gives them a tense and dramatic character (“Blue Dancers”, pastel). Since the late 1880s, Degas has been sculpting a lot, achieving expressiveness in the transfer of instantaneous movement (“Dancer”, bronze).

Renoir Pierre Auguste In 1862-1864, Renoir studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he became close friends with future Impressionist comrades-in-arms Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. Renoir worked in Paris, visited Algeria, Italy, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, Germany. In the early works of Renoir, the influence of Gustave Courbet and the works of the young Édouard Manet (“Mother Anthony’s Tavern”, 1866,) is felt. At the turn of the 1860s and 1870s, Renoir switched to painting in the open air, organically including human figures in a changeable light and air environment (“Bathing in the Seine”, 1869). Renoir's palette brightens, a light dynamic stroke becomes transparent and vibrating, the coloring is saturated with silver-pearl reflections (“Lodge”, 1874). Depicting episodes snatched from the stream of life, random life situations, Renoir preferred festive scenes of city life - balls, dances, walks, as if trying to embody in them the sensual fullness and joy of being (Moulin de la Galette, 1876). A special place in the work of Renoir is occupied by poetic and charming female images: internally different, but outwardly slightly similar to each other, they seem to be marked by a common seal of the era (“After dinner”, 1879, “Umbrellas”, 1876; portrait of actress Jeanne Samary, 1878) . In the depiction of the nude, Renoir achieves a rare sophistication of carnations, built on a combination of warm flesh tones with gliding light greenish and gray-blue reflexes, giving a smooth and dull surface to the canvas (“Nude Woman Sitting on a Couch”, 1876). A wonderful colorist, Renoir often achieves the impression of monochrome painting with the help of the finest combinations of tones close in color (“Girls in Black”, 1883). From the 1880s, Renoir gravitated more and more towards classical clarity and generalization of forms; features of decorativeness and serene idyllicity are growing in his painting (“Large Bathers”, 1884-1887). Numerous drawings and etchings (“Bathers”, 1895) by Renoir are distinguished by laconicism, lightness and airiness of the stroke.

Manet Edouard A significant influence on the formation of Manet as an artist was exerted by the work of Giorgione, Titian, Hals, Velazquez, Goya, Delacroix. In the works of the late 1850s and early 1860s, which formed a gallery of sharply conveyed human types and characters, Manet combined the lifelike authenticity of the image with the romanticization of the external appearance of the model (“Lola from Valencia”, 1862). Using and rethinking the plots and motifs of the paintings of the old masters, Manet sought to fill them with relevant content, sometimes shockingly introducing the image of a modern person into famous classical compositions (“Breakfast on the Grass”, “Olympia” - both 1863). In the 1860s, Edouard Manet turned to the themes of modern history (“The Execution of Emperor Maximilian”, 1867), but Manet’s penetrating attention to modernity was manifested primarily in scenes that seemed to be snatched from the everyday flow of life, full of lyrical spirituality and inner significance (“ Breakfast in the workshop”, “Balcony” - both 1868), as well as in portraits close to them in terms of artistic installation (portrait of Emile Zola, 1868, portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1872). With his work, Edouard Manet anticipated the emergence, and then became one of the founders of impressionism. At the end of the 1860s, Manet became close to Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, moved from deaf and dense tones, intense color with a predominance of dark colors to light and free plein air painting (“In a Boat”, 1874, Metropolitan Museum of Art; “ In papa Latuille's tavern, 1879). Many of Manet's works are characterized by impressionistic pictorial freedom and fragmentary composition, light-saturated colorful vibrating scale (“Argenteuil”). At the same time, Manet retains the clarity of the drawing, gray and black tones in color, prefers not the landscape, but the everyday plot with a pronounced socio-psychological underpinning (the collision of dreams and reality, the illusory happiness in a sparkling and festive world - in one of Manet's last paintings "Bar at the Folies Bergère", 1881-1882). In the 1870s-1880s, Manet worked a lot in the field of portraiture, expanding the possibilities of this genre and turning it into a kind of study of the inner world of a contemporary (portrait by S. Mallarmé, 1876), painted landscapes and still lifes (“Lilac Bouquet”, 1883), acted as a draftsman, master of etching and lithography.

Pissarro Camille was influenced by John Constable, Camille Corot, Jean Francois Millet. One of the leading masters of impressionism, Pissarro, in numerous rural landscapes, revealed the poetry and charm of the nature of France, with the help of a soft painterly range, a subtle transfer of the state of the light-air environment, gave the charm of freshness to the most unpretentious motives (“Plowed Land”, 1874; “Wheelbarrow”, 1879,) . Subsequently, Pissarro often turned to the urban landscape (“Montmartre Boulevard”, 1897; “Opera Passage in Paris”, 1898). In the second half of the 1880s, Pissarro sometimes used the painting technique of neo-impressionism. Pissarro played one of the main roles in organizing exhibitions of the Impressionists. In his works, Camille Pissarro managed to avoid the extreme manifestation of plein air, when material objects seem to dissolve in the flickering of light and air space (“Snow in Louveciennes”; “Street in Louveciennes”, 1873). Many of his works are distinguished by an interest in the characteristic expressiveness, even portraiture, inherent in the urban landscape (“View of Rouen”, 1898)

Sisley Alfred was influenced by Camille Corot. One of the leading masters of impressionism, Sisley painted unpretentious landscapes of the surroundings of Paris, marked by subtle lyricism and sustained in a fresh and restrained light range. Sisley's landscapes, conveying the true atmosphere of Ile-de-France, preserve the special transparency and softness of natural phenomena of all seasons (“Little Square in Argenteuil”, 1872, “Flood in Marly”, 1876; “Frost in Louveciennes”, 1873, "The Edge of the Forest at Fontainebleau", 1885).

The enchanting images of nature by the artist Alfred Sisley with a slight shade of sadness captivate with an amazing transfer of mood at a given moment in time (“Bank of the Seine at Bougival”, 1876). Since the mid-1880s, features of colorful decorativeism have been growing in Sisley's work.

Conclusion: the masters of impressionism recorded their fleeting impressions, strove to capture the real world in its mobility and variability in the most natural and unbiased way. E. Manet (who was not formally a member of the Impressionist group), O. Renoir, E. Degas brought freshness and immediacy to the perception of life in art, turned to the image of instant situations snatched from the stream of reality, the spiritual life of a person, the image of strong passions, the spiritualization of nature, interest

to the national past, the desire for synthetic forms of art are combined with the motifs of world sorrow, the desire to explore and recreate the "shadow", "night" side of the human soul, with the famous "romantic irony", which allowed romantics to boldly compare and equalize high and low, tragic and comic, real and fantastic. used fragmentary, reality situations, used fragmentary, at first glance, unbalanced compositional constructions, unexpected angles, points of view, cuts of figures. In the 1870s-1880s, the landscape of French impressionism was formed: C. Monet, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley developed a consistent plein air system, created in their paintings a feeling of sparkling sunlight, richness of colors of nature, dissolution of forms in the vibration of light and air.

The direction of I. developed in France in the last. third of the 19th century - early 20th century and went through 3 steps:

1860-70s - early I.

1874-80s - mature I.

90s of the 19th century - late I.

The name of the direction I. came from the name of the painting by C. Monet “Impression. The Rising Sun, written in 1872.

Origins: the work of the "small" Dutch (Vermeer), E. Delacroix, G. Courbet, F. Millet, K. Corot, the artists of the Barbizon school - they all tried to capture the subtlest moods of nature, atmosphere, performing small sketches in nature.

Japanese engraving, an exhibition of which was held in Paris in 1867, where for the first time whole series of images of the same object were shown at different times of the year, day, etc. (“100 Views of Mount Fuji”, Tokaido Station, etc.)

Aesthetic principles AND.:

Rejection of the conventions of classicism; rejection of historical, biblical, mythological subjects, mandatory for classicism;

Work in the open air (except for E. Degas);

Transfer of an instant impression, which includes observation and study of the surrounding reality in various manifestations;

Impressionist painters expressed in paintings not only what they see(as in realism) but how they see(subjective principle);

The Impressionists, as artists of the city, tried to capture it in all its diversity, dynamics, speed, diversity of clothes, advertisements, movement (C. Monet “Boulevard des Capucines in Paris”;

Impressionist painting is characterized by democratic motives, which affirmed the beauty of everyday life; plots - this is a modern city, with its entertainment: cafes, theaters, restaurants, circuses (E. Manet, O. Renoir, E. Degas). It is important to note the poetic nature of the motives of the image;

New forms of painting: framing, sketching, etude, small sizes of works in order to emphasize the fleetingness of the impression, violating the integrity of objects;

The plot of the Impressionist paintings was not basic and typical, as in the realistic direction of the 19th century, but random (not a performance, a rehearsal - E. Degas: a ballet series);

- "mixture of genres": landscape, everyday genre, portrait and still life (E. Manet - "Bar in the Folies-Bergere";

Instantaneous image of the same object at different times of the year, day (C. Monet - “Haystacks”, “Poplars”, a series of images of the Rouen Cathedral, water lilies, etc.)

The creation of a new pictorial system to preserve the freshness of an instant impression: the decomposition of complex tones into pure colors - separate strokes of pure color that mixed in the eye of the viewer with a bright color range. The painting of the Impressionists is a variety of commas-strokes, which gives the paint layer quivering and relief;

The special role of water in its image: water as a mirror, a vibrating color medium (C. Monet "Rocks in Belle-Ile").

From 1874 to 1886, the Impressionists held 8 exhibitions; after 1886, Impressionism begins to decompose as a holistic trend into neo-impressionism and post-impressionism.

Representatives of French impressionism: Edouard Manet, Claude Monet - the founder of I., Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro.

Russian impressionism is characterized:

A more accelerated development of impressionism in its "pure form", because. this trend in Russian painting appears in the late 80s of the 19th century;

Great prolongation in time (I. appears as a stylistic coloring in the works of major Russian artists: V. Serov, K. Korovin)

Great contemplation and lyricism, "rural version" (compared to the "urban" French): I. Grabar - "February Blue", "March Snow", "September Snow";

Depiction of purely Russian themes (V. Serov, I. Grabar);

Greater interest in a person (V. Serov "Girl illuminated by the sun" "Girl with peaches";

Less dynamization of perception;

Romantic coloration.