Impressionism

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The Impressionist style of painting developed in the late nineteenth century in France. Although the Impressionist movement did not exclusively consist of French artists, it did start in France and the French painters are among the most well-known. Several earlier artistic movements, such as Classicism and Realism, influenced the Impressionist painters. In 1855, a World Fair was held in Paris, and art was given significant attention. This contributed to Paris' reputation as the center of the art world and the place to be for aspiring painters, such as the group that would come to be known as the Impressionists.

The Académie Suisse, founded and run by the painter Charles Suisse, provided the venue which inspired Impressionism's founding artists. It was here that Pissarro, Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne first came to know each other. Despite the obvious advantage of providing free models, the Académie was important for another reason: it provided the place and opportunity for aspiring artists to air new and controversial ideas about painting. Each year the Académie sponsored an exhibition where its members, often the professors themselves, judged entries. It was the restrictive nature of the judges, preferring established "accepted art," that prompted Monet and some other painters to exhibit their works separately in the studio of the photographer, Nadar. This historic exhibition, held in 1874, included Monet's famous Impression: Sunrise (1872), which is generally thought to have prompted the naming of the whole genre.

The Impressionists focused on capturing the overall impression of a scene through effects produced by using light and color in various ways. The principal French Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, Frédéric Bazille, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne. The established painter Édouard Manet, whose work in the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and others of the group, himself adopted the Impressionist approach about 1873.

What is Impressionism?