Impressionism
The impressionist art movement originated in France in the last quarter of the 19th century as a reaction against traditional art and its strict rules. A group of painters who became known as the Impressionists decided to gain independence from the standards prescribed by the French Academy of Fine Arts and France's annual official art exhibition called The Salon. Impressionism covers approximately two decades, from the late 1860s through the 1880s. The term impressionist was first used by French art critic Louis Leroy in 1874 based on Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise. Leroy found the term fitting to describe the loose, undefined and "unfinished" style that Monet and several other artists applied to their paintings.
With the 19th century Industrial Revolution and the reconstruction of Paris into a modern city, the city scene became one of the Impressionists' favorite subjects: "women wearing the latest fashions, the airy new streets and suburbs of Paris, modern modes of transportation ..., and the riverside and seacoast resorts where Parisians spent their leisure time." It’s a mistake to think that the Impressionists banded together for a singular aesthetic purpose, or indeed, that there was a guiding artistic principle that gave them a common bond. Nor did they perceive themselves as revolutionaries with the goal of upsetting the old order and replacing it with something radically different. If anything, what came to be called Impressionism was a natural consequence of confluent forces, social, technological, and economic, as well as aesthetic.
More than any other factor, Impressionism took root as a reaction against the government sanctioned academic painting that dominated French art in the first half of the 19th century. It grew from the interaction of artists who were angered by the establishment. In 19th Century France The Academie des Beaux Arts with its annual juried exhibit, the salon, established the standard for artists. It was more than simply a
With the 19th century Industrial Revolution and the reconstruction of Paris into a modern city, the city scene became one of the Impressionists' favorite subjects: "women wearing the latest fashions, the airy new streets and suburbs of Paris, modern modes of transportation ..., and the riverside and seacoast resorts where Parisians spent their leisure time." It’s a mistake to think that the Impressionists banded together for a singular aesthetic purpose, or indeed, that there was a guiding artistic principle that gave them a common bond. Nor did they perceive themselves as revolutionaries with the goal of upsetting the old order and replacing it with something radically different. If anything, what came to be called Impressionism was a natural consequence of confluent forces, social, technological, and economic, as well as aesthetic.
More than any other factor, Impressionism took root as a reaction against the government sanctioned academic painting that dominated French art in the first half of the 19th century. It grew from the interaction of artists who were angered by the establishment. In 19th Century France The Academie des Beaux Arts with its annual juried exhibit, the salon, established the standard for artists. It was more than simply a