The Impressionist Revolution: Light in Modern Painting

Artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro were pioneers of this movement, creating works that celebrate the beauty of everyday life and nature.

By studying Impressionism, you will be transported to a world of vibrant colors, rapid brushstrokes, and scenes that seem to be captured in the exact moment.

Between 1860, a group of young French intellectuals, questioned the academic art and proposed the most revolutionary movement that occurred until then.

The "Café Guerbois" was known for these frequenters who, later, became known as the "impressionists".

But history holds a strange detail:

At that time, the world of Art was living a turmoil with the famous painting of Édouard Manet  "Dejeuner sur l'herbe" (Almoço na Relva). Monet and his friends gathered around the artist and completely changed the way of painting.

Surprisingly, they took more than 4 years working in almost asphyxiating conditions.

"Manet is as important to us as Cimabue and Giotto were for the Italian Renaissance".  declared Renoir.

Although the work of the impressionists was the work of realist painters, the great difference was in the lack of concern to transmit a social or moral message.

The interest was to faithfully represent the perceptions of the natural world, exactly as seen.

The concern was the light and its effects, its constant variations, the surfaces of objects, and how to pass these perceptions to painting.

The theories of chromatic harmony were increasingly debated and stimulated the impressionists in their explorations on the nature of visual experiences.  They also noted that shadows, like local color, are composed not of one, but of several shades; they are not black or dark.

The line leaves being represented because, for these artists, it was only a means of representing images.

They should paint quickly to capture the light of the moment.

The fascination of the impressionists with reflected light extended to the variations of light in different seasons of the year.

They were not the first to observe this phenomenon, but they distinguished themselves in their interpretations.

In 1874, the first impressionist exhibition was held in the studio of the photographer Nadar, by this group of unknown artists.

Among them were Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and Alfred Sisley. They totaled 30 exhibitors, whose names, for the most part, are now forgotten.

The Exhibition was called Sociedade Anônima dos Artistas, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc...".

As was to be expected from a society always resistant to the new, they were not well received by the few visitors.

The impressionist manner, seemingly undisciplined, was an affront to the public accustomed to the academic.

It was unacceptable that the painters changed the collective view of reality.

The art critic Louis Leroy defined Monet's painting "Impression Sol Nascente" as being an impression and nothing more.

The group, adhering to the name, baptized the movement as "Impressionism".

The term "impression" was already widely used by the artists themselves when referring to their works.

Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro were so concerned with capturing the truth translated in the light of the moment that they began to study the new scientific theories of light and color.

They were not discouraged by the criticism and the disdain of the public that had been following them for a long time.

The end of the 19th century was a very rich historical period of inventions that, of course, influenced art.

Among them, photography exercised a strong influence on painting.

In fact, the impressionists were fascinated by photography, and thinking that it did what they did, they began to modify the way they expressed themselves, with rapid movements, they wanted to do what photography proposes, freeze the image.

They were fascinated by the light of the sun.

The main proposal was to leave the atelier and paint outdoors to capture the light, movement, and real color of each moment of the day.

To understand the rest of this journey, continue to our next article:

Masters of Impressionism: Names and Unforgettable Works.