Impressionist paintings urban landscapes. Paintings by Konstantin Korovin. City landscape. Frederic Bazille: "Pink Dress"
One of the largest trends in art in the last decades of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century is impressionism, which spread throughout the world from France. Its representatives were engaged in the development of such methods and techniques of painting that would allow the most vivid and natural reflection of the real world in dynamics, to convey fleeting impressions of it.
Many artists created their canvases in the style of impressionism, but the founders of the movement were Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Frederic Bazille, Camille Pissarro. It is impossible to name their best works, since they are all beautiful, but there are the most famous ones, and it is about them that will be discussed below.
Claude Monet: “Impression. Rising Sun"
The canvas from which to start a conversation about the best paintings of the Impressionists. Claude Monet painted it in 1872 from life in the old port of Le Havre, France. Two years later, the painting was shown to the public for the first time in the former workshop of the French artist and cartoonist Nadar. This exhibition has become fateful for the art world. Impressed (not in the best sense) by Monet's work, whose name in the original language sounds like "Impression, soleil levant", the journalist Louis Leroy first introduced the term "impressionism" into circulation, denoting a new direction in painting.
The painting was stolen in 1985 together with the works of O. Renoir and B. Morisot. They discovered it five years later. Currently, "Impression. The Rising Sun ”belongs to the Marmottan-Monet Museum in Paris.
Edouard Monet: Olympia
The painting "Olympia", created by the French impressionist Edouard Manet in 1863, is one of the masterpieces of modern painting. It was first presented at the Paris Salon in 1865. Impressionist painters and their paintings often found themselves in the center high-profile scandals... However, Olympia became the cause of the largest of them in the history of art.
On the canvas, we see a naked woman, face and body facing the audience. The second character is a dark-skinned maid holding a luxurious bouquet wrapped in paper. At the foot of the bed there is a black kitten in a characteristic pose with an arched back. Not much is known about the history of the painting; only two sketches have come down to us. The model was, most likely, Manet's favorite model - Quiz Mönard. There is an opinion that the artist used the image of Marguerite Bellange - Napoleon's mistress.
During the period of creativity when Olympia was created, Manet was fascinated by Japanese art, and therefore deliberately refused to elaborate on the nuances of dark and light. Because of this, his contemporaries did not see the volume of the depicted figure, they considered it flat and rough. The artist was accused of immorality and vulgarity. Never before have Impressionist paintings provoked such excitement and mockery from the crowd. The administration was forced to place guards around her. Degas compared Manet's fame, won through Olympia, and the courage with which he received criticism, with Garibaldi's life story.
Almost a quarter of a century after the exhibition, the canvas was kept out of the reach of the prying eyes of the master artist. Then it was exhibited again in Paris in 1889. It was almost bought, but the artist's friends collected the required amount and bought "Olympia" from the widow of Manet, and then donated it to the state. Today the painting belongs to the Orsay Museum in Paris.
Auguste Renoir: "Big Bathers"
The picture is written French artist in 1884-1887 Considering everything now famous paintings Impressionists between 1863 and the beginning of the twentieth century, "Big Bathers" is called the largest canvas with nude female figures. Renoir worked on it for over three years, and during this period many sketches and sketches were created. There was no other painting in his work that he devoted so much time to.
In the foreground, the viewer sees three naked women, two of whom are on the shore, and the third is in the water. The figures are written very realistically and clearly, which is characteristic feature style of the artist. Renoir's models were Alina Sharigo (his future wife) and Suzanne Valadon, who in the future herself became a famous artist.
Edgar Degas: Blue Dancers
Not all of the famous Impressionist paintings listed in the article were painted with oil on canvas. The photo above allows you to understand what the painting "Blue Dancers" is. It is made in pastels on a paper sheet measuring 65x65 cm and belongs to the late period of the artist's work (1897). He painted it with already impaired eyesight, therefore, the decorative organization is of paramount importance: the image is perceived as large colored spots, especially when viewed up close. The topic of the dancers was close to Degas. She was repeatedly repeated in his work. Many critics believe that the harmony of color and composition of "Blue Dancers" can be considered better work artist on this topic. Currently, the painting is kept in the Museum of Arts. A.S. Pushkin in Moscow.
Frederic Bazille: "Pink Dress"
One of the founders of French Impressionism, Frederic Bazille was born into a bourgeois family of a wealthy winemaker. Even during his years of study at the Lyceum, he began to get involved in painting. Having moved to Paris, he made acquaintance with C. Monet and O. Renoir. Unfortunately, the artist was destined for a short life path... He died at the age of 28 at the front during the Franco-Prussian War. However, his, albeit few, canvases are rightfully included in the list “ The best paintings impressionists ". One of them is “ Pink dress", Written in 1864. By all indications, the canvas can be attributed to early Impressionism: color contrasts, attention to color, sunlight and a frozen moment, the very thing that was called" impression ". The model was one of the artist's cousins, Teresa de Horse. The painting is currently owned by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Camille Pissarro: “Boulevard Montmartre. Afternoon, sunny "
Camille Pissarro became famous for his landscapes, a characteristic feature of which is the portrayal of light and illuminated objects. His work has had a significant impact on the genre of impressionism. The artist independently developed many of his inherent principles, which formed the basis of creativity in the future.
Pissaro liked to write the same place at different times of the day. He has a whole series of paintings with Parisian boulevards and streets. The most famous of them is Boulevard Montmartre (1897). It reflects all the charm that the artist sees in the seething and restless life of this corner of Paris. Viewing the boulevard from the same place, he demonstrates it to the viewer on a sunny and cloudy day, in the morning, afternoon and late evening. The photo below shows the painting Boulevard Montmartre at night.
This style was later adopted by many artists. We will only mention which paintings of the Impressionists were painted under the influence of Pissarro. This trend can be clearly seen in the work of Monet (series of paintings "Stoga").
Alfred Sisley: "Lawns in Spring"
"Lawns in Spring" is one of the latest paintings by landscape painter Alfred Sisley, written in 1880-1881. On it, the viewer sees a forest path along the banks of the Seine with a village on the opposite bank. In the foreground is a girl - the artist's daughter Jeanne Sisley.
The artist's landscapes convey the true atmosphere of the historical region of Ile-de-France and retain a special softness and transparency. natural phenomena typical for specific seasons. The artist was never a supporter of unusual effects and adhered to a simple composition and a limited palette of colors. Now the picture is kept in National Gallery London.
We have listed the most famous Impressionist paintings (with titles and descriptions). These are masterpieces of world painting. The unique style of painting, which originated in France, was at first perceived with mockery and irony, critics emphasized the frank negligence of artists in writing canvases. Now, hardly anyone dares to challenge their genius. Impressionist paintings are exhibited in the most prestigious museums in the world and are a welcome exhibit for any private collection.
The style has not sunk into oblivion and has many followers. Our compatriot Andrei Koch, French painter Laurent Parsellier, American women Diana Leonard and Karen Tarlton are famous modern impressionists. Their paintings are made in the best traditions genre filled with bright colors, bold strokes and life. The photo above is the work of Laurent Parsellier "In the Rays of the Sun".
Further development European painting associated with impressionism. This term was born by chance. The reason was the name of the landscape by C. Monet “Impression. Sunrise "(see Appendix No. 1, Fig. 3) (from the French impression - impression), which appeared at the exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874. This is the first public appearance of a group of artists, which included C. Monet, E. Degas, O. Renoir, A. Sisley, C. Pissarro and others, was greeted by official bourgeois criticism with crude ridicule and harassment. True, since the end of the 1880s, the formal methods of their painting were taken up by representatives of academic art, which gave Degas a reason to note with bitterness: "We were shot, but at the same time they ransacked our pockets."
Now, when the heated debate about Impressionism is a thing of the past, hardly anyone would dare to dispute that the Impressionist movement was a further step in the development of European realistic painting. "Impressionism is, first of all, the art of observing reality, which has reached unprecedented sophistication" (VN Prokofiev). Striving for maximum immediacy and accuracy in conveying the visible world, they began to paint mainly in the open air and raised the importance of sketch from nature, which almost supplanted the traditional type of painting, carefully and slowly created in the studio.
Consistently enlightening their palette, the Impressionists freed painting from earthy and brown varnishes and paints. The conventional, "museum" blackness in their canvases gives way to an endlessly diverse play of reflexes and colored shadows. They expanded the possibilities immeasurably visual arts, discovering not only the world of sun, light and air, but also the beauty of fogs, the restless atmosphere of life big city, a scattering of night lights and the rhythm of continuous movement.
By virtue of the very method of working in the open air, the landscape, including the city landscape they discovered, took a very important place in the art of the Impressionists. The work of the outstanding 19th century painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) testifies to how organically tradition and innovation merged in the art of the Impressionists. True, he himself did not consider himself a representative of impressionism and was always exhibited separately, but ideologically and ideologically, he was undoubtedly both the forerunner and ideological leader of this movement.
At the beginning of his career, E. Manet was ostracized (mockery of society). In the eyes of the bourgeois public and critics, his art becomes synonymous with the ugly, and the artist himself is called "a madman who paints a picture, shaking in delirium tremens" (M. de Montifo) (see Appendix No. 1, Fig. 4). Only the most discerning minds of that time were able to appreciate the talent of Manet. Among them were C. Baudelaire and the young E. Zola, who declared that "Monsieur Manet is destined for a place in the Louvre."
The most consistent, but also far-reaching expression of impressionism was found in the work of Claude Monet (1840-1926). His name is often associated with such achievements of this pictorial method as the transmission of elusive transitional states of illumination, the vibration of light and air, their relationship in the process of incessant changes and transformations. "This, undoubtedly, was a great victory for the art of the New Age," writes VN Prokofiev and adds: "But also his final victory." It is no accident that Cezanne, albeit somewhat polemically sharpening his position, later asserted that Monet's art is “only an eye”.
Monet's early work is quite traditional. They still contain human figures, which later more and more turn into staffage and gradually disappear from his paintings. In the 1870s, the impressionistic manner of the artist was finally formed, from now on he devoted himself entirely to landscape. Since that time, he has been working almost exclusively in the open air. It is in his work that the type of a large picture - a study - is finally established.
One of the first Monet begins to create a series of paintings in which the same motif is repeated at different times of the year and day, under different lighting and weather conditions (see Appendix No. 1, Fig. 5, 6). Not all of them are equal, but the best canvases of these series amaze with freshness of colors, intensity of color and artistry of rendering of lighting effects.
In the late period of creativity in Monet's painting tendencies of decorativeism and flatness intensified. The brightness and purity of colors turn into their opposite, some whiteness appears. Speaking about the late Impressionists' abuse of "a light tone that turns some works into a discolored canvas", E. Zola wrote: "And today there is nothing but plein air ... only spots remain: a portrait is only a spot, figures are only spots, only spots" ...
Other impressionist painters were also mostly landscape painters. Their work often undeservedly remained in the shadows next to the truly colorful and impressive figure of Monet, although they were not inferior to him in vigilance of seeing nature and in pictorial skill. Among them, the names of Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) and Camille Pissarro (1831-1903) should be mentioned first. The works of Sisley, an Englishman by birth, are characterized by a special pictorial elegance. A brilliant master of plein air, he knew how to convey the transparent air of a clear winter morning, a light haze of fog warmed by the sun, clouds running across the sky on a windy day. Its range is notable for its richness of shades and fidelity of tones. The artist's landscapes are always imbued with a deep mood, reflecting his basically lyrical perception of nature (see Appendix # 1, Fig. 7, 8, 9).
More difficult was creative way Pissarro, the only artist who participated in all eight exhibitions of the Impressionists - J. Rewald called him the "patriarch" of this movement. Starting with landscapes close in painting to the Barbizon people, he, under the influence of Manet and his young friends, began to work in the open air, consistently highlighting the palette. Gradually he develops his own impressionistic method. He was one of the first to abandon the use of black paint. Pissarro has always been inclined towards an analytical approach to painting, hence his experiments on the decomposition of color - "divisionism" and "pointellism". However, he soon returns to the impressionistic manner in which he created best works- wonderful series of city landscapes Paris (see Appendix # 1, fig. 10,11,12,13). Their composition is always thought out and balanced, the painting is refined in color and virtuoso in technique.
In Russia, the city landscape in impressionism was enlightened by Konstantin Korovin. "Paris came as a shock to me ... the impressionists ... in them I saw what I was scolded for in Moscow." Korovin (1861-1939), along with his friend Valentin Serov, were central figures of Russian Impressionism. Under the great influence of the French movement, he created his own style, which mixed the main elements of French impressionism with the rich colors of Russian art of that period (see Appendix # 1, fig. 15).
18-19 centuries marked the heyday European art... In France, Emperor Napoleon III ordered the reconstruction of Paris to begin after the hostilities during the Franco-Prussian War. Paris quickly became the same "shining city" as it was under the Second Empire and once again proclaimed itself the center of European art. Therefore, many impressionist painters turned to the theme of the modern city in their works. In their works, the modern city is not a monster, but the place of the motherland where people live. Many works are soaked strong feeling patriotism.
This can be seen especially in the paintings of Claude Monet. He created more than 30 paintings with views of the Rouen Cathedral in a wide variety of lighting and atmospheric conditions. For example, in 1894 Monet painted two paintings - "Rouen Cathedral at noon" and "Rouen Cathedral in the evening". Both paintings depict the same fragment of the cathedral, but in different tonalities - in the warm yellow-pink tones of midday and in the cold bluish shades of dying twilight light. In the paintings, a colorful spot completely dissolves the line, the artist conveys not the material weight of the stone, but, as it were, a light colorful curtain.
The Impressionists strove to make the picture look like an open window through which the real world is visible. Often they would choose a point of view from the window onto the street. The famous Boulevard des Capucines by C. Monet, painted in 1873 and shown at the first exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874, is an excellent example of this technique. There is a lot of innovation here - the view of a large city street has been chosen as the motive for the landscape, but the artist is interested in its appearance as a whole, and not its sights. The entire mass of people is depicted with sliding strokes, in general, in which it is difficult to make out individual figures.
Monet conveys in this work an instant, purely spectator's impression of the barely noticeable vibrating air, from people going deep into the street, people and leaving carriages. He destroys the idea of the plane of the canvas, creating the illusion of space and filling it with light, air and movement. The human eye rushes to infinity, and there is no limit point where it could stop.
The high vantage point allows the artist to abandon the foreground, and he captures the radiant sunlight in contrast to the bluish-purple shadow of the houses lying on the street pavement. The sunny side of Monet gives orange, golden-warm, shady - violet, but a single light-air haze gives the whole landscape tonal harmony, and the outlines of houses and trees appear in the air, penetrated by the sun's rays.
In 1872, in Le Havre, Monet wrote “Impression. Sunrise ”- a view of the port of Le Havre, presented later at the first exhibition of the Impressionists. Here the artist, as you can see, finally freed himself from the generally accepted idea of the object of the image as a certain volume and devoted himself entirely to conveying the momentary state of the atmosphere in blue and pink-orange tones. Indeed, everything seems to become immaterial: the pier and ships merge with the streaks in the sky and reflection in the water, and the silhouettes of fishermen and boats in the foreground are just dark spots made with several intense strokes. The rejection of academic technique, painting in the open air and the choice of unusual subjects were received with hostility by the critics of that time. Louis Leroy, the author of a furious article that appeared in the magazine "Sharivari", for the first time, in connection with this picture, used the term "impressionism" as a definition of a new trend in painting.
Another outstanding work dedicated to the city was the painting by Claude Monet "Gare de Saint-Lazare". Based on the motif of the Saint-Lazare station, Monet executed over ten paintings, seven of which were exhibited at the 3rd Impressionist exhibition in 1877.
Monet rented a tiny apartment on Rue Moncy, not far from the train station. The artist was given complete freedom of action. The movement of trains was temporarily suspended, and he could clearly see the platforms, the furnaces of smoking steam locomotives, which were filled with coal - so that steam would pour out of the pipes. Monet firmly "settled" at the station, the passengers watched him with reverence and awe.
Since the appearance of the station was constantly changing, Monet made only sketches on the "nature", and from them in the workshop he wrote the pictures themselves. On the track we see a large railway station, covered with a canopy, fixed on iron poles. There are platforms on the left and right, one track for commuter trains, the other for long-distance trains. A special atmosphere is conveyed through the contrast between the dim lighting inside the station and the bright dazzling street light. Puffs of smoke and steam scattered throughout the canvas counterbalance the contrasting streaks of lighting. Smoke seeps everywhere, shining clouds swirling against the subtle silhouettes of buildings. Thick steam seems to give shape to massive towers, covering them with a light veil, like the finest spider web. The picture is painted in gentle muted tones with subtle gradations of shades. The swift, precise strokes in the form of commas, characteristic of that time, are perceived as a mosaic, the viewer has the impression that the vapor is dispersed and then condensed.
Another representative of the Impressionists, C. Pissarro, like all the Impressionists, loved to paint the city, which captivated him with its endless movement, the flow of air currents and the play of light. He perceived it as a living, restless organism, capable of changing depending on the season, the degree of illumination.
In the winter and spring of 1897, Pissarro worked on the Boulevards of Paris series of paintings. These works brought the artist fame and attracted the attention of critics who connected his name with the divisionist movement. The artist made sketches for the series from the window of a room in a Paris hotel, and completed work on the paintings in his studio in Eragny at the end of April. This series is the only one in the work of Pissarro, in which the artist strove to capture with maximum accuracy the various conditions of weather and sunlight. For example, the artist painted 30 paintings depicting the Boulevard Montmartre, looking at it from the same window.
In the paintings "Boulevard Montmartre in Paris" master C. Pissarro masterly conveyed the richness of atmospheric effects, colorful complexity and subtlety of a cloudy day. The dynamics of urban life, so convincingly embodied by the painter's quick brush, creates the image of a modern city - not ceremonial, not official, but excited and lively. The urban landscape became the main genre in the work of this outstanding impressionist - "the singer of Paris".
The capital of France occupies a special place in the work of Pissarro. The artist constantly lived outside the city, but Paris persistently attracted him. Paris captivates him with its incessant and universal movement - the walking of pedestrians and the running of carriages, the flow of air currents and the play of light. The city of Pissarro is not a list of notable houses that have come to the attention of the artist, but a living and restless organism. Captivated by this life, we are not aware of the banality of the buildings that make up the Boulevard Montmartre. Unique charm finds the artist in the restlessness of the Grands Boulevards. Morning and day, evening and night, sunlit and gray, Pissarro captured the Boulevard Montmartre, looking at it from the same window. The clear and simple motif of the street receding into the distance creates a clear compositional basis that does not change from canvas to canvas. The cycle of canvases painted the following year from the window of the Louvre hotel was constructed in a completely different way. In a letter to his son while working on the cycle, Pissarro emphasized the character of this place, which is different from the Boulevards, that is, the square of the French Theater and the surrounding area. Indeed, there everything rushes along the axis of the street. Here - the square, which served as the final stop of several omnibus routes, intersects in various directions, and instead of a wide panorama with an abundance of air, a closed foreground space appears to our eyes.
Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin is an outstanding Russian artist, decorator, one of the largest Russian artists of the turn of the century (19-20). Korovin is a master of the plein air, the author of landscapes, genre paintings, still lifes, portraits. The artist was born in Moscow. He studied in St. Petersburg and Moscow, with Savrasov and Polenov. Konstantin Korovin was a member of the association: "The Association of Mobile art exhibitions"," Union of Russian Artists "and" World of Art ". It is considered one of the most prominent representatives"Russian impressionism".
In the work of Korovin, one can see the desire to achieve synthetic pictorial solutions through light and shade modulations, the harmony of tonal relationships. Such are the "Northern Idyll" (1886), "At the balcony. Spaniards Leonora and Ampara "(1888)," Hammerfest. Northern Lights "(1895) and others. And next to things of a different "Korovin" orientation - a portrait of the soloist of the Russian Private Opera T.S. cafe ", where, for the first time, Korovin's work so penetratingly conveyed the barely perceptible picturesque" aroma "of the very air of the French capital.
The core of Korovin's method is the ability to transform the most ordinary and even clearly unattractive motive by means of precisely seen and, as it were, instantly captured color content into a high aesthetic spectacle.
Paris in the paintings of Korovin
The stay in Paris during the preparation of the World Exhibition - this stay was secondary and much more meaningful - opened the artist's eyes to the modern french painting... He studies the impressionists, so consonant with his aspirations, but remains alien to all post-impressionist movements. In the 1900s, Korovin created his famous series "Paris". Unlike the Impressionists, his views of Paris are written much more directly and emotionally. They are dominated by the master's desire "to rip off the charm that is currently contained in the landscape" (according to B. Ioganson, a student of Korovin).
The artist is looking for the subtlest transitional and unexpected states in the life of the city - morning Paris, Paris at dusk, evening and night city (Paris, Morning, 1906; Paris in the evening, 1907; Twilight in Paris, 1911). Morning haze and quivering light of the rising sun, lilac twilight with not yet tarnished green trees and already lighting up lanterns, velvety density of the dark blue sky and a bright feverish scattering of lights of night Paris ... Korovin in these little things achieves an almost documentary truth of the visual impression, and meanwhile, this leads to an amazing spirituality, pristine image of the city. Thanks to the method of a complex color-tonal solution, in a small sketch, he achieved both the utmost expression at the level of a large finished picture, and the effect of an exciting emotional involvement of the viewer with what he saw.
“I want the viewer's eye to enjoy aesthetically as well as the ear of the soul - music,” Korovin once said.
Pictures of paintings
Paris in the paintings of Korovin
"A new world was born when the impressionists wrote it"
Henri Kahnweiler
XIX century. France. An unprecedented thing happened in painting. A group of young artists decided to shake 500 years of tradition. Instead of a clear drawing, they used a wide, "sloppy" brushstroke.
And they completely abandoned the usual images, depicting everyone in a row. And ladies of easy virtue, and gentlemen of dubious reputation.
The public was not ready for the Impressionist painting. They were ridiculed and scolded. And most importantly, nothing was bought from them.
But the resistance was broken. And some of the Impressionists lived to see their triumph. True, they were already over 40. Like Claude Monet or Auguste Renoir. Others received recognition only at the end of their lives, like Camille Pissarro. Someone did not live up to him, like Alfred Sisley.
What revolutionary did each of them accomplish? Why did the public not accept them for so long? Here are 7 of the most illustrious French impressionists that the whole world knows.
1. Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Edouard Manet. Self-portrait with a palette. 1878 Private collectionManet was older than most Impressionists. He was their main inspiration.
Manet himself did not pretend to be the leader of the revolutionaries. He was a socialite. I dreamed of official awards.
But he waited for recognition for a very long time. The audience wanted to see Greek goddesses or still lifes at worst, to look beautiful in the dining room. Manet wanted to write modern life... For example, courtesans.
The result was Breakfast on the Grass. Two dandies are resting in the company of ladies of easy virtue. One of them, as if nothing had happened, sits next to the dressed men.
Edouard Manet. Breakfast on the grass. 1863, Paris Compare his Breakfast on the Grass with Tom Couture's Romans in Decline. Couture's painting made a splash. The artist instantly became famous.
“Breakfast on the Grass” was accused of vulgarity. Pregnant women were absolutely seriously not recommended to look at her.
Thomas Couture. Decline Romans. 1847 Musée d'Orsay, Paris. artchive.ru In the painting by Couture, we see all the attributes of academism (traditional painting of the 16th-19th centuries). Columns and statues. People of Apollo appearance. Traditional muted colors. The mannerism of postures and gestures. A plot from the distant life of a completely different people.
Manet's “Breakfast on the Grass” is of a different format. Before him, no one had portrayed courtesans so easily. Next to respectable townspeople. Although many men of that time and spent their leisure time. It was real life real people.
Once he portrayed a respectable lady. Ugly. He couldn't flatter her with a brush. The lady was disappointed. She left him in tears.
Edouard Manet. Angelina. 1860 Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia.commons.org So he continued to experiment. For example, with color. He did not try to portray the so-called natural color. If he saw gray-brown water as bright blue, then he portrayed it as bright blue.
This, of course, annoyed the audience. “After all, even the Mediterranean Sea cannot boast of such a blue as the water of Manet,” they snapped.
Edouard Manet. Argenteuil. 1874 Museum fine arts, Tournai, Belgium. Wikipedia.org But the fact remains. Manet radically changed the purpose of painting. The painting became the embodiment of the individuality of the artist, who writes as he pleases. Forgetting patterns and traditions.
Innovation was not forgiven him for a long time. Recognition waited only at the end of his life. But he no longer needed it. He was painfully fading away from an incurable disease.
2. Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Claude Monet. Self-portrait in a beret. 1886 Private collection Claude Monet can be called a textbook impressionist. Since he was faithful to this direction all his long life.
He did not paint objects and people, but a single color structure of glare and spots. Separate strokes. Trembling air.
Claude Monet. Paddling pool. 1869 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Metmuseum.org Monet wrote not only about nature. He also succeeded in urban landscapes. One of the most famous - .
This picture has a lot of photography. For example, motion is conveyed using a blurred image.
Please note: distant trees and figures seem to be in a haze.
Claude Monet. Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. 1873 (Gallery of Art of Europe and America of the 19th and 20th centuries), Moscow Before us is a frozen moment of the seething life of Paris. No staging. Nobody is posing. People are depicted as a collection of strokes. Such plotlessness and freeze frame effect - main feature impressionism.
By the mid-80s, artists became disillusioned with Impressionism. Aesthetics is, of course, good. But the plotlessness depressed many.
Only Monet continued to persist, exaggerating impressionism. This developed into a series of paintings.
He painted the same landscape dozens of times. At different times of the day. V different times of the year. To show how temperature and light can change the same look beyond recognition.
This is how countless haystacks appeared.
Paintings by Claude Monet at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Left: Haystacks at sunset at Giverny, 1891 Right: Haystack (snow effect), 1891
Please note that the shadows in these paintings are colored. And not gray or black, as was customary before the Impressionists. This is another invention of theirs.
Monet managed to enjoy success and material well-being. After 40, he has already forgotten about poverty. Got a home and a lovely garden. And I still worked for my own pleasure long years.
Read about the most iconic painting of the master in the article
3. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Self-portrait. 1875 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, USA. Pinterest.ru Impressionism is the most positive painting. And the most positive among the Impressionists was Renoir.
You will not find drama in his paintings. Even black paint he did not use. Only the joy of being. Even the most commonplace in Renoir looks beautiful.
Unlike Monet, Renoir painted people more often. Landscapes were less important to him. In the paintings, his friends and acquaintances are resting and enjoying life.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Breakfast of the rowers. 1880-1881 The Phillips Collection, Washington, USA. Wikimedia.commons.org You will not find in Renoir and profundity. He was very happy to join the Impressionists, who polls refused to plots.
As he himself said, he finally has the opportunity to paint flowers and call them simply “Flowers”. And not make up any stories about them.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Woman with umbrella in the garden. 1875 Thyssen-Bormenis Museum, Madrid. arteuam.com Best of all, Renoir felt himself in the company of women. He asked his maids to sing and joke. The more stupid and naive the song was, the better for him. And the male chatter tired him. It is not surprising that Renoir is known for his nude paintings.
The model in the painting "Nude in the Sunlight" appears to appear against a colorful abstract background. Because for Renoir, there is nothing secondary. The model's eye or background area is equivalent.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Nude in the sunlight. 1876 Museum d'Orsay, Paris. wikimedia.commons.org Renoir lived a long life. And I never put down the brush and palette. Even when his hands were completely shackled by rheumatism, he tied the brush to his hand with a rope. And drew.
Like Monet, he received recognition after 40 years. And I saw my paintings in the Louvre, next to the works of famous masters.
Read about one of the most charming portraits of Renoir in the article
4. Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Edgar Degas. Self-portrait. 1863 Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal. Cultured.com Degas was not a classical impressionist. He did not like to work in the open air. You will not find a deliberately lightened palette with him.
On the contrary, he loved a clear line. He has plenty of black color. And he worked exclusively in the studio.
Yet he is always ranked alongside other great Impressionists. Because he was an impressionist of gesture.
Unexpected angles. Asymmetry in the arrangement of objects. Characters taken by surprise. These are the main attributes of his paintings.
He stopped moments of life, not allowing the characters to come to their senses. Just look at his Opera Orchestra.
Edgar Degas. Opera Orchestra. 1870 Musée d'Orsay, Paris. commons.wikimedia.org In the foreground is the back of a chair. The musician has his back to us. And in the background the ballerinas on the stage did not fit into the “frame”. Their heads are mercilessly “cut off” by the edge of the picture.
His favorite dancers are not always depicted in beautiful poses. Sometimes they just stretch.
But such an improvisation is imaginary. Of course, Degas thought carefully about the composition. This is just a freeze frame effect, not a real freeze frame.
Edgar Degas. Two ballet dancers. 1879 Shelbourne Museum, Vermouth, USA Edgar Degas loved to paint women. But illness or body characteristics did not allow him to have physical contact with them. He has never been married. No one has ever seen him with a lady.
The lack of real plots in his personal life added a subtle and intense eroticism to his images.
Edgar Degas. Ballet star. 1876-1878 Musée d'Orsay, Paris. wikimedia.comons.org Please note that only the ballerina herself is drawn in the painting "The Star of the Ballet". Her colleagues behind the scenes are barely distinguishable. Maybe a few legs.
This does not mean that Degas did not complete the picture. This is the technique. To keep only the most important in focus. The rest should be made disappearing, illegible.
Read about other paintings by the master in the article
5. Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
Edouard Manet. Portrait of Berthe Morisot. 1873 Marmottan-Monet Museum, Paris. Berthe Morisot is rarely placed in the first row of the great impressionists. I’m sure it’s not deserved. Just here you will find all the main features and techniques of impressionism. And if you like this style, you will love her work with all your heart.
Morisot worked quickly and impulsively, transferring her impressions to the canvas. The figures seem to be about to dissolve in space.
Berthe Morisot. Summer. 1880 Fabre Museum, Montpellier, France. Like Degas, she often left out some details. And even body parts of the model. We cannot distinguish the hands of the girl in the painting "Summer".
Morisot's path to self-expression was difficult. Not only that she was engaged in "sloppy" painting. She was still a woman. In those days, a lady was supposed to dream of marriage. After that, any hobby was forgotten.
Therefore, Bertha refused marriage for a long time. Until I found a man who was respectful of her occupation. Eugene Manet was the brother of the artist Édouard Manet. He dutifully carried an easel and paints for his wife.
Berthe Morisot. Eugene Manet with his daughter in Bougival. 1881 Marmottan-Monet Museum, Paris. But still it was in the 19th century. No, Morisot did not wear trousers. But she could not afford complete freedom of movement.
She could not go to the park to work alone, without someone close to her. I couldn't sit alone in a cafe. Therefore, her paintings are people from the family circle. Husband, daughter, relatives, nannies.
Berthe Morisot. A woman with a child in a garden in Bougival. 1881 g. National Museum Wales, Cardiff. Morisot did not wait for recognition. She died at the age of 54 from pneumonia, without selling almost any of her work during her lifetime. On her death certificate, there was a dash in the line of business. It was unthinkable for a woman to be called an artist. Even if she really was.
Read about the master's paintings in the article
6. Camille Pissarro (1830 - 1903)
Camille Pissarro. Self-portrait. 1873 Museum d'Orsay, Paris. Wikipedia.org Camille Pissarro. Conflict-free, judicious. Many perceived him as a teacher. Even the most temperamental colleagues did not speak ill of Pissarro.
He was a staunch follower of Impressionism. In dire need, with a wife and five children, he still worked hard in his favorite style. And he never switched to salon painting to become more popular. It is not known where he got the strength to believe in himself to the end.
In order not to die of hunger at all, Pissarro painted fans, which he willingly bought up. And real recognition came to him after 60 years! Then he was finally able to forget about the need.
Camille Pissarro. Stagecoach in Louveciennes. 1869 Museum d'Orsay, Paris The air in Pissarro's paintings is thick and dense. An extraordinary fusion of color and volume.
The artist was not afraid to paint the most changeable natural phenomena that appear for a moment and disappear. First snow, frosty sun, long shadows.
Camille Pissarro. Frost. 1873 Musée d'Orsay, Paris His most famous works are views of Paris. With wide boulevards, a bustling motley crowd. At night, during the day, in different weather. In some ways, they have something in common with a series of paintings by Claude Monet.
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