Photography Schools

Impressionism (Fr. impressionisme, from the word impression) is an artistic style from the last third of the XIX century until the beginning of the XX century, which had a profound influence on all subsequent art work. The representatives of this style strove to convey a first-hand impression of the world around them and the changing countryside with their pictures. Impressionism was born in the 1860s in France when E. Manet, O. Renoit, and E. Degas brought the variety and complexity of urban life into their paintings along with an original and direct perception of the world. Their works were characterized by depictions of chance situations, the bold nature of their compositions, their seeming instability, the fragmentariness of their compositions, unexpected points of view, perspectives, and figures only partly in view.

The Impressionists created a movement within painting which differs in its development of complex tones using pure colours transferred to the canvas using separate dabs of the brush. Anyone viewing the picture from a distance experiences an optical displacement of these colours. All of this, in addition to the shades of colour, created bright and cheerful pictures. The play of the various brush dabs, paste-like and thick, added tenderness and reality to the layer of paint, giving a sense of incompleteness and sketchiness of composition. In this way, several stages of the artists' work became blurred into one process, as if the painting was replaced by a sketch. In various ways the creation of compositions and space in impressionism was noticeably influenced by Japanese prints. In impressionism there is a characteristic tendency to erase clear-cut boundaries between genres, for instance, to mix genre painting with a portrait. Impressionism spread widely through the art world, though many merely grasped its separate aspects - addressing topical themes, the effects of open-air painting, brighter palettes, the sketchy nature of the painting style, and so on.

What is the essence of impressionism and its artistic technique? In their works the Impressionists strove to convey a first-hand impression of the surrounding world. These impressions came primarily from the modern city with its ever-moving, impulsive, and diverse life. They tried to bring these impressions to life on canvas, using painting materials to create illusions of light and air - a rich milieu. To do this they used a range of colours in an attempt to paint using pure shades and did not mix paint on the palette. They relied on the optical perception of the eye, which, at a distance, naturally merges the separate brush dabs into one larger picture. They strove to get as close as possible to how this or that object is perceived by a person in real life. People always perceive these objects in all their complex interaction in an environment of light and air.