Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism, French Impressionnisme, a major movement, first in painting and later in music, that developed chiefly in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Impressionist painting consists of the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The basic characteristic of Impressionism was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of temporary effects of light and colour. The principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Frédéric Bazille, who worked together, influenced each other, and exhibited together independently. Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne also painted in an Impressionist style for a time in the early 1870s. The established painter Édouard Manet, whose work in the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and others of the group, himself adopted the Impressionist approach in about 1873.

The word “impressionniste” was printed for the first time in the Charivari on the 25 April 1874 by Louis Leroy, after Claude Monet's landscape entitled Impressions: soleil levant [Impressions].

The impressionist style of painting is characterized chiefly by concentration on the general impression produced by a scene or object and the use of unmixed primary colours and small strokes to simulate reflected light.

Impressionism is sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects.
Impressionist motto - human eye is a marvelous instrument.

Impressionist techniques (examples)

• Short, thick strokes of paint are used to capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details.
• Colours are applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible. The optical mixing of colours occurs in the eye of the viewer.
• Grays and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. In pure Impressionism the use of black paint is avoided.
• Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting.
• Painting in the evening to get effets de soir - the shadowy effects of the light in the evening or twilight.
• The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection of colours from object to object.
• In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly painted with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces.  

Painters throughout history had occasionally used these methods, but Impressionists were the first to use all of them together, and with such boldness.

The term Impressionism has also been used to describe works of literature in which a few select details are enough to communicate the sensory impressions of an incident or scene. Impressionist literature is closely related to Symbolism, with its major examples being Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Authors such as Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad have written works which are Impressionistic in the way that they describe, rather than interpret, the impressions, sensations and emotions that constitute a character's mental life.

Examples from the Czech literature: Fráňa Šrámek, Vilém Mrštík (the novel Santa Lucia).