How did the name impressionism come from. Impressionism style: paintings by famous artists

Today, impressionism is perceived as a classic, but in the era of its formation it was a real revolutionary breakthrough in art. The innovations and ideas of this trend completely changed the artistic perception of art in the 19th and 20th centuries. And modern impressionism in painting inherits the principles that have already become canonical and continues aesthetic searches in the transmission of sensations, emotions and light.

Prerequisites

There are several reasons for the appearance of impressionism, this is a whole complex of preconditions that led to a real revolution in art. In the 19th century, a crisis was brewing in French painting, it was associated with the fact that the "official" criticism did not want to notice and let various emerging new forms into galleries. Therefore, painting in impressionism became a kind of protest against the inertia and conservatism of generally accepted norms. Also, the origins of this movement should be sought in the trends inherent in the Renaissance and associated with attempts to convey living reality. The artists of the Venetian school are considered the first progenitors of impressionism, then the Spaniards took this path: El Greco, Goya, Velazquez, who directly influenced Manet and Renoir. Technological progress also played a role in the development of this school. Thus, the emergence of photography gave rise to a new idea in art about capturing momentary emotions and sensations. It is this instant impression that the artists of the direction we are considering are trying to "grasp". The development of the plein air school, which was founded by representatives of the Barbizon school, also influenced this trend.

History of impressionism

In the second half of the 19th century, a critical situation developed in French art. Representatives of the classical school do not accept the innovations of young artists and do not admit them to the Salon - the only exhibition that opens the way to customers. The scandal erupted when the young Edouard Manet presented his work "Breakfast on the Grass". The painting aroused the outrage of critics and the public, and the artist was forbidden to exhibit it. Therefore, Manet participates in the so-called "Salon of the Outcast" together with other painters who were not allowed to participate in the exhibition. The work received a huge response, and a circle of young artists began to form around Manet. They gathered in cafes, discussed the problems of contemporary art, argued about new forms. A society of painters appears, who will be called Impressionists after one of the works of Claude Monet. This community included Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Basil, Degas. The first exhibition of artists of this trend took place in 1874 in Paris and ended, like all subsequent ones, in failure. Actually, impressionism in music and painting covers a period of only 12 years, from the first exhibition to the last, held in 1886. Later, the direction begins to disintegrate into new trends, some of the artists die. But this period made a real revolution in the minds of creators and the public.

Ideological principles

Unlike many other directions, painting in impressionism was not associated with deep philosophical views. The ideology of this school was a momentary experience, an impression. The artists did not set themselves social tasks, they strove to convey the fullness and joy of being in everyday life. Therefore, the genre system of impressionism was generally very traditional: landscapes, portraits, still lifes. This direction is not an unification of people on the basis of philosophical views, but a community of like-minded people, each of whom leads his own quest in the study of the form of being. Impressionism lies precisely in the uniqueness of the look at ordinary objects, it focuses on individual experience.

Technique

It is quite easy to recognize painting in impressionism by some of its characteristic features. First of all, it is worth remembering that the artists of this trend were passionate lovers of color. They almost completely ditch blacks and browns in favor of rich, vibrant palettes, often heavily lightened. The impressionist technique is distinguished by short strokes. They strive for the overall impression, not the meticulous drawing of details. The canvases are dynamic, discontinuous, which corresponds to human perception. Painters strive to arrange colors on the canvas in such a way as to obtain coloristic intensity or affinity in the picture; they do not mix colors on the palette. Artists often worked in the open air, and this was reflected in the technique, in which there was no time to dry the previous layers. Paints were applied side by side or one on top of the other, while using a covering material, which made it possible to create the effect of "inner glow".

The main representatives in French painting

The homeland of this trend is France, it was here that impressionism first appeared in painting. The artists of this school lived in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. They presented their work at 8 Impressionist exhibitions, and these canvases have become classics of the trend. It is the French Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Morisot and others who are the progenitors of the current we are considering. The most famous impressionist, of course, is Claude Monet, whose works fully embodied all the features of this trend. Also, the current is rightly associated with the name of Auguste Renoir, who considered his main artistic task to convey the play of the sun; moreover, he was a master of sentimental portraiture. Impressionism also includes such outstanding artists as Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin.

Impressionism in other countries

Gradually, the direction spreads in many countries, the French experience has been successfully picked up in other national cultures, although in them we have to talk more about individual works and techniques than about the consistent implementation of ideas. German painting in Impressionism is represented primarily by the names of Lesser Uri, Max Lieberman, Lovis Corinth. In the USA, ideas were implemented by J. Whistler, in Spain - by H. Sorolla, in England - by J. Sargent, in Sweden - by A. Zorn.

Impressionism in Russia

Russian art in the 19th century was significantly influenced by French culture, so domestic artists also could not avoid being carried away by the new trend. Russian impressionism in painting is most consistently and fruitfully represented in the work of Konstantin Korovin, as well as in the works of Igor Grabar, Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov. The peculiarities of the Russian school consisted in the sketchiness of the works.

What was impressionism in painting? The founding artists strove to capture the momentary impressions of contact with nature, and the Russian creators also tried to convey the deeper, philosophical meaning of the work.

Impressionism today

Despite the fact that almost 150 years have passed since the emergence of the direction, modern impressionism in painting has not lost its relevance today. Due to the emotionality and ease of perception, paintings in this style are very popular and even commercial success. Therefore, many artists around the world are working in this direction. So, Russian impressionism in painting is presented in the new Moscow museum of the same name. There are regularly held exhibitions of contemporary authors, for example V. Koshlyakov, N. Bondarenko, B. Gladchenko and others.

Masterpieces

Modern art lovers often call Impressionism in painting their most beloved direction. The paintings of the artists of this school are sold at auctions at fabulous prices, and the collections in museums enjoy great public attention. The main masterpieces of impressionism are considered to be the paintings of C. Monet "Water Lilies" and "Rising Sun", O. Renoir "Ball at the Moulin de la Galette", C. Pissarro "Boulevard Montmartre at night" and "Pont Boaldier in Rouen on a rainy day", E Degas "Absinthe", although the list is almost endless.

At the turn of the 18-19th centuries, a new leap in the development of science and technology took place in most of Western Europe. Industrial culture has done a tremendous job of strengthening the spiritual foundations of society, overcoming rationalistic guidelines and cultivating the human in man. She very keenly felt the need for beauty, for the establishment of an aesthetically developed personality, for the deepening of real humanism, having taken practical steps to embody freedom, equality, and harmonize social relations.

During this period, France was going through a difficult time. The Franco-Prussian War, a short bloody uprising and the fall of the Paris Commune marked the end of the Second Empire.

After the clearing of the ruins left over from the terrible Prussian bombings and the violent civil war, Paris once again proclaimed itself the center of European art.

After all, it became the capital of European artistic life back in the days of King Louis XIV, when the Academy and annual art exhibitions were established, which received the names of Salons - from the so-called Square Salon in the Louvre, where new works of painters and sculptors were exhibited every year. In the 19th century, it is the Salons, where a sharp artistic struggle will unfold, that will reveal new trends in art.

The acceptance of the painting for the exhibition, the approval of its jury at the Salon, was the first step towards the public recognition of the artist. Since the 1850s, the Salons more and more turned into grandiose reviews of works selected for the sake of official tastes, which even gave rise to the expression “salon art”. Pictures that did not correspond in any way to this nowhere prescribed, but strict "standard" were simply rejected by the jury. The press in every way discussed which artists were accepted into the Salon and which were not, turning almost each of these annual exhibitions into a public scandal.

Between 1800 and 1830, Dutch and English landscape painters began to influence French landscape painting and the visual arts in general. Eugene Delacroix, a representative of romanticism, brought a new brightness of colors and virtuosity of writing to his paintings. He was an admirer of Constable, who strove for a new naturalism. Delacroix's radical approach to color and his technique of applying large strokes of paint to reinforce the form would later be developed by the Impressionists.

Of particular interest to Delacroix and his contemporaries were Constable's sketches. Trying to capture the infinitely variable properties of light and color, Delacroix noticed that in nature they "never remain motionless." Therefore, the French romantics got into the habit of painting in oils and watercolors faster, but by no means superficial sketches of individual scenes.

By the middle of the century, the most significant phenomenon in painting was the realists, led by Gustave Courbet. After 1850 in French art, for a decade, there was an unparalleled fragmentation of styles, partly acceptable, but never approved by authorities. These experiments pushed young artists on a path that was a logical continuation of already emerging trends, but seemed overwhelmingly revolutionary to the public and the judges of the Salon.

The art that dominated the halls of the Salon, as a rule, was distinguished by its external craft and technical virtuosity, interest in anecdotal, entertainingly told stories of a sentimental, everyday, fake historical nature and an abundance of mythological stories that justify all kinds of images of the naked body. It was an eclectic and entertaining, unprincipled art. The relevant personnel were trained under the auspices of the Academy by the School of Fine Arts, where the whole business was run by such masters of late academicism as Couture, Cabanel and others. Salon art was distinguished by exceptional vitality, artistic vulgarization, spiritually uniting and adapting to the level of the philistine tastes of the public the achievements of the main creative searches of its time.

The art of the Salon was opposed by various realistic trends. Their representatives were the best masters of French artistic culture of those decades. They are associated with the work of realist artists who continue the thematic traditions of realism in the 40-50s under the new conditions. 19th century - Bastien-Lepage, Lermitte and others. The pioneering realistic searches of Edouard Manet and Auguste Rodin, the acutely expressive art of Edgar Degas and, finally, the work of a group of artists who most consistently embodied the principles of impressionist art: Claude Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir. It was their work that marked the beginning of the rapid development of the period of impressionism.

Impressionism (from the French impression-impression), a trend in the art of the last third of the XIX - early XX centuries, whose representatives sought to most naturally and impartially capture the real world in its mobility and changeability, to convey their fleeting impressions.

Impressionism constituted an era in French art in the second half of the 19th century and then spread to all European countries. He reformed artistic tastes, rebuilt visual perception. In essence, he was a natural continuation and development of the realistic method. The art of the Impressionists is as democratic as the art of their direct predecessors, it makes no distinction between "high" and "low" nature and completely trusts the testimony of the eye. The way of "looking" is changing - it becomes more intent and at the same time more lyrical. The connection with romanticism is eroding - the impressionists, like the realists of the older generation, want to deal only with modernity, avoiding historical, mythological and literary themes. For great aesthetic discoveries, they had enough of the simplest, daily observed motives: Parisian cafes, streets, modest gardens, the banks of the Seine, the surrounding villages.

The Impressionists lived in an era of struggle between modernity and tradition. We see in their works a radical and stunning for that time break with the traditional principles of art, the culmination, but not the end of the search for a new look. Abstractionism of the 20th century was born from experiments with the art that existed at that time, just as the innovations of the Impressionists grew out of the work of Courbet, Corot, Delacroix, Constable, as well as the old masters that preceded them.

The Impressionists abandoned the traditional distinctions between etude, sketch and painting. They started and finished work right in the open air - in the open air. Even if they had to finish something in the workshop, they nevertheless tried to preserve the feeling of a captured moment and convey the light-airy atmosphere enveloping objects.

The plein air is the key to their method. On this path, they have achieved an exceptional subtlety of perception; they managed to reveal in the relations of light, air and color such enchanting effects that they had not noticed before and without the painting of the Impressionists, they probably would not have noticed. No wonder, they said that the London fogs were invented by Monet, although the Impressionists did not invent anything, relying only on the testimony of the eye, without mixing them with prior knowledge of what was depicted.

Indeed, the Impressionists most of all treasured the contact of the soul with nature, attaching great importance to direct impression, observation of various phenomena of the surrounding reality. No wonder they patiently waited for clear, warm days to write in the open air in the open air.

But the creators of the new type of beauty never aspired to careful imitation, copying, objective "portraying" of nature. In their works, there is not just a virtuoso handling of the world of impressive appearances. The essence of impressionistic aesthetics lies in the amazing ability to condense beauty, to highlight the depth of a unique phenomenon, fact and to recreate the poetics of a transformed reality warmed by the warmth of the human soul. This is how a qualitatively different, aesthetically attractive world, saturated with spiritualized radiance, arises.

As a result of the impressionistic touch to the world, everything, at first glance, ordinary, prosaic, trivial, momentary was transformed into a poetic, attractive, festive, striking everything with the penetrating magic of light, richness of colors, quivering glare, vibration of the air and persons radiating purity. In contrast to academic art, which relied on the canons of classicism - the obligatory placement of the main characters in the center of the picture, the three-dimensional nature of the space, the use of a historical plot for the purpose of a very specific semantic orientation of the viewer - the Impressionists ceased to subdivide objects into main and secondary, sublime and low. From now on, multi-colored shadows from objects, a haystack, a lilac bush, a crowd on a Paris boulevard, a colorful market life, laundresses, dancers, saleswomen, the light of gas lamps, a railway line, bullfighting, seagulls, rocks, peonies could be embodied in the picture.

The Impressionists are characterized by a keen interest in all the phenomena of everyday life. But this did not mean some kind of omnivorousness, promiscuity. In ordinary, everyday phenomena, the moment was chosen when the harmony of the surrounding world was manifested most impressively. The impressionistic worldview was extremely responsive to the most subtle shades of the same color, state of an object or phenomenon.

In 1841, London-based American portrait painter John Goffrand first invented a tube to squeeze paint out of, and paint traders Winsor and Newton quickly jumped at the idea. Pierre Auguste Renoir, according to the testimony of his son, said: "Without paints in tubes, there would be no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley, no Pissarro, not one of those whom the journalists later dubbed the impressionists."

The paint in the tubes had the consistency of fresh oil, ideal for application to canvas with thick, pasty strokes of a brush or even a spatula; both methods were used by the Impressionists.

The whole range of bright stable paints began to appear on the market in new tubes. The advances in chemistry at the beginning of the century brought new paints, for example, cobalt blue, artificial ultramarine, yellow chrome with an orange, red, green, tint, emerald green, white zinc, long-lasting white lead. By the 1850s, artists had at their disposal a bright, reliable and comfortable palette of colors like never before. .

The Impressionists did not pass by the scientific discoveries of the middle of the century concerning optics, color decomposition. Complementary colors of the spectrum (red - green, blue - orange, lilac - yellow), when adjacent, reinforce each other, and when mixed, they fade. Any color placed on a white background appears to be surrounded by a slight halo of complementary color; in the same place and in the shadows cast by objects when they are illuminated by the sun, a color appears that is additional to the color of the object. Partly intuitively, and partly consciously, the artists used such scientific observations. For impressionist painting, they turned out to be especially important. The Impressionists took into account the laws of perception of color at a distance and, if possible, avoiding mixing colors on the palette, they arranged pure colorful strokes so that they blend in the eye of the viewer. The bright colors of the solar spectrum are one of the commandments of impressionism. They refused black, brown tones, because the solar spectrum does not have them. They conveyed shadows with color, not black, hence the soft radiant harmony of their canvases .

In general, the impressionistic type of beauty reflected the fact of the opposition of the spiritual person to the process of urbanization, pragmatism, enslavement of feelings, which led to an increase in the need for a more complete disclosure of the emotional beginning, the actualization of the spiritual qualities of the individual and aroused the desire for a more acute experience of the spatio-temporal characteristics of life.

The word "Impressionism" is derived from the French "impression" -impression. This is the direction of painting that originated in France in the 1860s. and in many ways determined the development of art in the 19th century. The central figures in this movement were Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley, and the contribution of each of them to its development is unique. The Impressionists opposed the conventions of classicism, romanticism and academism, asserted the beauty of everyday reality, simple, democratic motives, achieved vivid reliability of the image, tried to capture the "impression" of what the eye sees at a particular moment, without focusing on drawing specific details.

In the spring of 1874, a group of young painters, including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Cézanne and Berthe Morisot, neglected the official Salon and staged their own exhibition. Such an act was already revolutionary in itself and broke with age-old foundations, while the paintings of these artists at first glance seemed even more hostile to tradition. The reaction to this innovation from visitors and critics was far from friendly. They accused artists of painting simply in order to attract the attention of the public, and not in the same way as recognized masters. The more condescending viewed their work as a mockery, as an attempt to play a trick on honest people. It took years of fierce struggle before these, subsequently recognized, classics of painting were able to convince the public not only of their sincerity, but also of their talent.

Trying to express as accurately as possible their direct impressions of things, the Impressionists created a new method of painting. Its essence consisted in the transmission of the external impression of light, shadow, reflexes on the surface of objects with separate strokes of pure paints, which visually dissolve the form in the surrounding light-air environment. In their favorite genres (landscape, portrait, multi-figure composition), they tried to convey their fleeting impressions of the world around them (scenes on the street, in a cafe, sketches of Sunday walks, etc.). The Impressionists depicted a life full of natural poetry, where a person is in unity with the environment, eternally changing, striking in wealth and sparkling of pure, bright colors.

After the first exhibition in Paris, these artists began to be called impressionists, from the French word "impression" - "impression". This word was suitable for their works, because in them the artists conveyed their direct impression of what they saw. Artists took a new approach to portraying the world. The main theme for them was the quivering light, the air, in which people and objects seem to be immersed. In their paintings one could feel the wind, the moist earth heated by the sun. They aimed to show the amazing richness of color in nature. Impressionism was the last major art movement in France in the 19th century.

This is not to say that the path of the Impressionist painters was easy. At first they were not recognized, their painting was too bold and unusual, they were laughed at. Nobody wanted to buy their paintings. But they stubbornly went their own way. Neither poverty nor hunger could force them to give up their beliefs. Many years passed, many of the Impressionist painters were no longer alive when their art was finally recognized.

All these very different artists were united by a common struggle against conservatism and academicism in art. The Impressionists held eight exhibitions, the last in 1886. This is actually the end of the history of impressionism as a trend in painting, after which each of the artists went their own way.

One of the paintings presented at the first exhibition of “independent”, as the artists themselves preferred to call themselves, belonged to Claude Monet and was called “Impression. Sunrise". In a newspaper review of the exhibition that appeared the next day, critic L. Leroy in every possible way scoffed at the lack of "made form" in the paintings, ironically bowing down the word "impression" in every way, as if replacing genuine art in the works of young artists. Contrary to expectation, a new word, uttered in mockery, stuck and served as the name of the entire movement, since it perfectly expressed the common thing that united all participants in the exhibition - the subjective experience of color, light, space. Trying to express their direct impressions of things as accurately as possible, the artists freed themselves from traditional rules and created a new method of painting.

The Impressionists put forward their own principles of perception and display of the surrounding world. They erased the line between the main objects worthy of high art and secondary objects, established a direct and feedback link between them. The impressionistic method thus became the maximum expression of the very principle of painting. The pictorial approach to the image just presupposes the identification of the connections of the object with the world around it. The new method forced the viewer to decipher not so much the twists and turns of the plot, but the secrets of the painting itself.

The essence of the impressionistic vision of nature and its image lies in the weakening of the active, analytical perception of three-dimensional space and its reduction to the original two-dimensionality of the canvas, determined by the planar visual installation, in the words of A. Hildebrand, "a distant look at nature", which leads to the distraction of the depicted object from its material qualities, merging with the environment, almost completely transforming it into "appearance", appearance, dissolving in light and air. It is no coincidence that P. Cezanne later called the leader of the French impressionists Claude Monet "just an eye". This "detachment" of visual perception also led to the suppression of the "color of memory", that is, the connection of color with the usual object representations and associations, according to which the sky is always blue and the grass is green. The impressionists could, depending on their vision, paint the sky green and the grass blue. "Objective plausibility" was sacrificed to the laws of visual perception. For example, J. Seurat enthusiastically told everyone how he discovered that the orange coastal sand in the shade is bright blue. So the principle of contrasting perception of complementary colors was taken as the basis of the painting method.

For the impressionist artist, for the most part, what matters is not what he depicts, but how. The object becomes only a pretext for solving purely pictorial, "visual" tasks. Therefore, Impressionism initially has another, later forgotten name - "chromantism" (from the Greek. Chroma - color). The Impressionists renewed the color, they abandoned the dark, earthy colors and applied pure, spectral colors to the canvas, almost without mixing them beforehand on the palette. The naturalism of impressionism consisted in the fact that the most uninteresting, mundane, prosaic turned into beautiful, as soon as the artist saw there the subtle nuances of gray and blue.

Characterized by the brevity, etude of the creative method of impressionism. After all, only a short sketch made it possible to accurately record individual states of nature. The Impressionists were the first to break with the traditional principles of spatial painting, dating back to the Renaissance and Baroque. They used asymmetrical compositions to better highlight the characters and objects that interested them. But the paradox was that, having abandoned the naturalism of academic art, destroying its canons and declaring the aesthetic value of fixing everything fleeting, accidental, the Impressionists remained captive to naturalistic thinking and even, moreover, in many ways it was a step backward. You can recall the words of O. Spengler that "the landscape of Rembrandt lies somewhere in the endless spaces of the world, while the landscape of Claude Monet is near the railway station"

Impressionism constituted an entire era in French art in the second half of the 19th century. The hero of the paintings of the Impressionists was light, and the task of the artists was to open people's eyes to the beauty of the world around them. Light and color could best be conveyed with fast, small, voluminous strokes. The impressionistic vision was prepared by the entire evolution of artistic consciousness, when movement began to be understood not only as a movement in space, but as a general variability of the surrounding reality.

Impressionism - (French impressionnisme, from impression - impression), the direction in art of the last third of the XIX - early XX centuries. It took shape in French painting in the late 1860s - early 70s. The name "impressionism" arose after the exhibition in 1874, at which the painting by C. Monet "Impression. Rising Sun". At the time of maturity of impressionism (70s - first half of the 80s), it was represented by a group of artists (Monet, O. Renoir, E. Degas, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley, B. Morisot, etc.), who united for struggle for the renewal of art and overcoming the official salon academism and organized for this purpose in 1874-86 8 exhibitions. One of the founders of impressionism was E. Manet, who was not a member of this group, but back in the 60s - early 70s. performed with genre works, in which he rethought the compositional and pictorial techniques of the masters of the 16th-18th centuries. in relation to modern life, as well as the scenes of the Civil War of 1861-65 in the United States, the shooting of the Parisian Communards, giving them an acute political orientation.

The Impressionists depicted the world around them in perpetual motion, the transition from one state to another. They began to paint a series of paintings, wanting to show how the same motif changes depending on the time of day, lighting, weather conditions, etc. (cycles "Boulevard Montmartre" by C. Pissarro, 1897; "Rouen Cathedral", 1893- 95, and London Parliament, 1903-04, C. Monet). Artists found ways to reflect the movement of clouds in their paintings (A. Sisley. "Louan at Saint-Mamme", 1882), the play of glare of sunlight (O. Renoir. "Swing", 1876), gusts of wind (C. Monet. "Terrace in Saint-Adresse ", 1866), streams of rain (G. Caillebotte." Jer. Effect of rain ", 1875), falling snow (C. Pissarro." Opera passage. Effect of snow ", 1898), the rapid run of horses (E. Manet . "Horse Racing at Longchamp", 1865).

Now, when heated debates about the meaning and role of impressionism are 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."

Striving for maximum immediacy and accuracy in conveying the world around them, 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.

The Impressionists showed the beauty of the real world, in which every moment is unique. 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 immeasurably expanded the possibilities of fine art, discovering not only the world of sun, light and air, but also the beauty of London fogs, the restless atmosphere of the life of a big city, the scattering of its night lights and the rhythm of incessant 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.

However, one should not assume that the painting of the Impressionists was characterized only by a "landscape" perception of reality, for which critics often reproached them. The thematic and plot range of their creativity was wide enough. Interest in a person, and especially in modern life in France, in a broad sense, was inherent in a number of representatives of this direction of art. His life-affirming, basically democratic pathos clearly opposed the bourgeois world order. In this one cannot fail to see the continuity of impressionism in relation to the main line of development of French realistic art of the 19th century.

By depicting landscapes and forms with colored dots, the Impressionists questioned the solidity and materiality of the things around them. But the artist cannot be content with one impression; he needs a drawing that organizes a complete picture. Beginning in the mid-1880s, a new generation of impressionist artists associated with this direction of art, puts more and more experiments in their painting, as a result of which the number of directions (varieties) of impressionism, art groups and venues for exhibitions of their work is growing.

The artists of the new direction did not mix different colors on the palette, but painted in pure colors. By placing a smear of one paint next to another, they often left the surface of the paintings rough. It has been observed that many colors become brighter when adjacent to each other. This technique is called the complementary color contrast effect.

Impressionist painters were sensitive to the slightest changes in the state of the weather, since they worked on nature and wanted to create an image of a landscape where motive, colors, lighting would merge into a single poetic image of an urban landscape or countryside. The Impressionists attached great importance to color and light through drawing and volume. The clear contours of objects disappeared, contrasts and chiaroscuro were forgotten. They strove to make the picture look like an open window through which the real world is visible. This new style influenced many artists of the time.

It should be noted that, like any direction in art, impressionism has its advantages and disadvantages.

Disadvantages of Impressionism:

French Impressionism did not raise philosophical problems and did not even try to penetrate the colored surface of everyday life. Instead, Impressionism focuses on superficiality, the fluidity of the moment, mood, lighting, or angle of view.

Like the art of the Renaissance (Renaissance), impressionism is built on the characteristics and skills of perception of perspective. At the same time, the Renaissance vision explodes with the proven subjectivity and relativity of human perception, which makes color and form autonomous constituents of the image. For Impressionism, what is shown in the picture is not so important, but how it is shown is important.

Their paintings represented only the positive aspects of life, did not violate social problems, and avoided such problems as hunger, disease, death. This later led to a split among the Impressionists themselves.

Benefits of Impressionism:

The advantages of impressionism as a trend include democracy. By inertia, art in the 19th century was considered a monopoly of aristocrats, the upper strata of the population. They were the main customers for paintings, monuments, they were the main buyers of paintings and sculptures. Plots with the hard work of the peasants, the tragic pages of our time, the shameful sides of wars, poverty, social troubles were condemned, disapproved, not bought. Criticism of the blasphemous morality of society in the paintings of Theodore Gericault, Francois Millet found a response only from supporters of artists and a few experts.

The Impressionists in this matter took quite a compromise, intermediate position. Biblical, literary, mythological, historical plots inherent in official academicism were discarded. On the other hand, they fervently desired recognition, respect, even awards. The activity of Edouard Manet is indicative, who for years has been seeking recognition and awards from the official Salon and its administration.

Instead, a vision of everyday life and modernity appeared. Artists often painted people in motion, during fun or rest, imagined a view of a certain place under a certain lighting, nature was also the motive of their work. They took plots of flirting, dancing, staying in cafes and theaters, boat trips, on beaches and in gardens. Judging by the paintings of the Impressionists, then life is a line of small holidays, parties, pleasant pastime outside the city or in a friendly environment (a number of paintings by Renoir, Manet and Claude Monet). The Impressionists were one of the first to paint in the air, without finalizing their work in the studio.

impressionism manet painting

In the last third of the XIX century. French art continues to play a major role in the artistic life of Western European countries. At this time, many new directions appeared in painting, whose representatives were looking for their own ways and forms of creative expression.

The most striking and significant phenomenon of French art of this period was impressionism.

The Impressionists made their mark on April 15, 1874 at an open-air exhibition in Paris on Boulevard des Capucines. Here 30 young artists, whose works were rejected by the Salon, exhibited their paintings. The central place in the exposition was given to the painting by Claude Monet “Impression. Sunrise". This composition is interesting because for the first time in the history of painting, the artist tried to convey his impression on the canvas, and not the object of reality.

The exhibition was attended by the representative of the publication "Sharivari", reporter Louis Leroy. It was he who first called Monet and his associates "impressionists" (from the French impression - impression), thus expressing his negative assessment of their painting. Soon this ironic name lost its original negative meaning and entered the history of art forever.

The exhibition on Boulevard des Capucines became a kind of manifesto proclaiming the emergence of a new trend in painting. It was attended by O. Renoir, E. Degas, A. Sisley, C. Pissarro, P. Cezanne, B. Morisot, A. Guillaume, as well as masters of the older generation - E. Boudin, C. Daubigny, I. Ionkind.

The most important thing for the Impressionists was to convey the impression of what they saw, to capture a short moment of life on canvas. In this way the Impressionists resembled photographers. The plot meant little to them. The artists took themes for their paintings from their everyday life. They painted quiet streets, evening cafes, rural landscapes, city buildings, artisans at work. An important role in their paintings was played by the play of light and shadow, sunbeams jumping over objects and giving them a slightly unusual and surprisingly lively appearance. To see objects in natural light, to convey the changes taking place in nature at different times of the day, the impressionist artists left their workshops and went into the open air (open air).

The Impressionists used a new painting technique: they did not mix paints on an easel, but were immediately applied to the canvas with separate strokes. Such a technique made it possible to convey a sense of dynamics, slight fluctuations in the air, movement of leaves on trees and water in a river.

Usually, the paintings of representatives of this trend did not have a clear composition. The artist transferred to the canvas a moment snatched from life, so his work resembled a photograph taken by chance. The Impressionists did not adhere to the clear boundaries of the genre, for example, the portrait often resembled an everyday scene.

From 1874 to 1886, the Impressionists organized 8 exhibitions, after which the group broke up. As for the public, she, like most critics, perceived the new art with hostility (for example, C. Monet's painting was called "daubs"), so many artists representing this direction lived in extreme poverty, sometimes without the means to finish what they had begun. picture. And only by the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century. the situation has changed radically.

In their work, the Impressionists used the experience of their predecessors: romantic artists (E. Delacroix, T. Gericault), realists (C. Corot, G. Courbet). They were greatly influenced by the landscapes of J. Constable.

E. Manet played a significant role in the emergence of a new trend.

Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet, born in 1832 in Paris, is one of the most significant figures in the history of world painting, which laid the foundation for Impressionism.

The formation of his artistic worldview was largely influenced by the defeat of the French bourgeois revolution of 1848. This event excited the young Parisian so much that he decided to take a desperate step and fled home, joining a sailor on a sailing ship. However, in the future he did not travel so much, giving all his mental and physical strength to work.

Manet's parents, cultured and wealthy people, dreamed of an administrative career for their son, but their hopes were not destined to be fulfilled. Painting was what interested the young man, and in 1850 he entered the School of Fine Arts, the Couture workshop, where he received a good professional training. It was here that the aspiring artist felt an aversion to academic and salon clichés in art, which cannot fully reflect what is subject only to a real master with his individual style of painting.

Therefore, after studying for some time in the Couture workshop and gaining experience, Manet left it in 1856 and turned to the canvases of great predecessors exhibited in the Louvre, copying and carefully studying them. His creative views were greatly influenced by the works of such masters as Titian, D. Velazquez, F. Goya and E. Delacroix; the young artist admired the latter. In 1857, Manet visited the great maestro and asked for permission to make several copies of his Barques Dante, which have survived to this day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Lyon.

The second half of the 1860s. the artist devoted to the study of museums in Spain, England, Italy and Holland, where he copied paintings by Rembrandt, Titian and others. In 1861 his works "Portrait of Parents" and "Guitarist" received critical acclaim and were awarded the "Honorable Mention".

The study of the work of the old masters (mainly the Venetians, the Spaniards of the 17th century, and later F. Goya) and its rethinking leads to the fact that by the 1860s. In the art of Manet there is a contradiction, manifested in the imposition of a museum print on some of his early paintings, which include: "Spanish Singer" (1860), partly "Boy with a Dog" (1860), "Old Musician" (1862).

As for the heroes, the artist, like the realists of the middle of the 19th century, finds them in the seething Parisian crowd, among the strolling in the Tuileries garden and among the regular visitors to the cafe. Basically it is the bright and colorful world of bohemians - poets, actors, painters, models, participants in the Spanish bullfight: "Music in the Tuileries" (1860), "Street Singer" (1862), "Lola from Valencia" (1862), "Breakfast at grass "(1863)," The Flutist "(1866)," Portrait of E. Zslya "(1868).

Among the early canvases, a special place is occupied by "Portrait of Parents" (1861), which presents a very accurate realistic sketch of the external appearance and character warehouse of an elderly couple. The aesthetic significance of the painting lies not only in the detailed penetration into the spiritual world of the characters, but also in how accurately the combination of observation and the richness of painting is conveyed, indicating a knowledge of the artistic traditions of E. Delacroix.

Another canvas, which is the programmatic work of the painter and, I must say, very typical of his early work, is "Breakfast on the Grass" (1863). In this picture, Manet took a certain plot composition, completely devoid of any significance.

The picture may well be regarded as a depiction of the breakfast of two artists in the bosom of nature, surrounded by girls-models (in fact, the artist's brother Eugene Manet, F. Lenkoff, and one woman-model, Quiz Meran, whose services Manet often resorted to, posed for the picture). One of them entered the stream, and the other, naked, sits in the company of two men dressed in artistic fashion. As you know, the motive for juxtaposing a clothed male and a naked female body is traditional and goes back to the painting by Giorgione "The Village Concert" located in the Louvre.

The compositional arrangement of figures partially reproduces the famous Renaissance engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi from the painting by Raphael. This canvas, as it were, polemically asserts two interrelated positions. One is the need to overcome the clichés of salon art, which has lost its true connection with the great artistic tradition, a direct appeal to the realism of the Renaissance and the 17th century, that is, the true primary sources of realistic art of modern times. Another provision confirms the artist's right and duty to depict the characters around him from everyday life. At that time, such a combination carried a certain contradiction. Most believed that a new stage in the development of realism could not be achieved by filling the old compositional schemes with new types and characters. But Edouard Manet managed to overcome the duality of the principles of painting in his early period of creativity.

However, despite the tradition of the plot and composition, as well as the presence of paintings by salon masters depicting naked mythical beauties in frank seductive poses, Manet's painting caused a big scandal among the modern bourgeoisie. The audience was shocked by the juxtaposition of a naked female body with prosaic everyday, modern male attire.

As far as pictorial norms are concerned, Breakfast on the Grass was written in the compromise characteristic of the 1860s. a manner characterized by a gravitation towards dark colors, black shadows, and also not always consistent appeal to plein air lighting and open color. If we turn to the preliminary sketch, made in watercolor, then it (more than in the painting itself) shows how great the artist's interest in new pictorial problems is.

The painting "Olympia" (1863), which gives an outline of a reclining nude woman, seemingly refers to the generally accepted compositional traditions - a similar image is found in Giorgione, Titian, Rembrandt and D. Velazquez. However, in his creation, Manet follows a different path, following F. Goya ("Nude Mach") and rejecting the mythological motivation of the plot, the interpretation of the image introduced by the Venetians and partially preserved by D. Velazquez ("Venus with a Mirror").

"Olympia" is not at all a poetically rethought image of female beauty, but an expressive, masterfully executed portrait, as if and, one might even say, somewhat coldly conveys the resemblance to Victorina Meran, Manet's constant model. The painter reliably shows the natural pallor of the body of a modern woman who is afraid of the sun's rays. While the old masters emphasized the poetic beauty of the naked body, the musicality and harmony of its rhythms, Manet focuses on conveying the motives of vital characteristic, completely moving away from the poetic idealization inherent in his predecessors. So, for example, the gesture with the left hand of George's Venus in Olympia takes on a shade that is almost vulgar in its indifference. Extremely characteristic and indifferent, but at the same time carefully fixing the viewer's gaze of the model, opposed to the self-absorption of Venus Giorgione and the sensitive reverie of Venus of Urbino Titian.

In this picture, there are signs of a transition to the next stage in the development of the painter's creative manner. There is a rethinking of the usual compositional scheme, which consists in prosaic observation and a pictorial and artistic vision of the world. The juxtaposition of instantly captured sharp contrasts contributes to the destruction of the balanced compositional harmony of the old masters. Thus, the statics of a posing model collides with the dynamics in the images of a black woman and a black cat bending its back. The changes also affect the painting technique, which gives a new understanding of the figurative tasks of the artistic language. Edouard Manet, like many other impressionists, in particular Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, rejects the outdated system of painting that took shape in the 17th century. (underpainting, writing, glazing). From that time on, the canvases began to be painted with a technique called "a la prima", characterized by greater spontaneity, emotionality, close to sketches and sketches.

The period of transition from early to mature art, which occupied almost the entire second half of the 1860s in Manet, is represented by such paintings as The Flutist (1866), The Balcony (c. 1868-1869), etc.

On the first canvas, against a neutral olive-gray background, a musician boy is depicted holding a flute to his lips. The expressiveness of the barely perceptible movement, the rhythmic roll call of the iridescent golden buttons on the blue uniform with the easy and quick sliding of the fingers along the flute holes speak of the innate artistry and subtle observation of the master. Despite the fact that the manner of painting here is quite dense, the color is weighty, and the artist has not yet turned to plein air, this canvas, to a greater extent than all the others, anticipates the mature period of Manet's work. As for the "Balcon", it is closer to the "Olympia" rather than to the works of the 1870s.

In the years 1870-1880. Manet became the leading painter of his time. And although the Impressionists considered him their ideological leader and inspirer, and he himself always agreed with them in interpreting the fundamental views on art, his work is much broader and does not fit into the framework of any one direction. Manet's so-called impressionism, in fact, is closer to the art of Japanese masters. He simplifies the motives, balancing the decorative and the real, creates a generalized idea of ​​what is seen: a pure impression devoid of distracting details, an expression of the joy of sensation (On the Seashore, 1873).

In addition, as the dominant genre, he seeks to preserve a compositionally complete picture, where the main place is given to the image of a person. Manet's art is the final stage in the development of the centuries-old tradition of realistic plot painting, which originated in the Renaissance.

In the later works of Manet, there is a tendency to move away from a detailed interpretation of the details of the environment surrounding the hero being portrayed. Thus, in the portrait of Mallarmé, full of nervous dynamics, the artist focuses on the poet's, as it were, an accidentally spied gesture, dreamingly dropping his hand with a smoking cigar on the table. For all the sketchiness, the main thing in the character and mental warehouse of Mallarmé is captured surprisingly accurately, with great convincingness. The in-depth characterization of the inner world of the individual, characteristic of the portraits of J.L. David and J.O.D. Ingres, is here replaced by a sharper and more direct characterization. Such is the gently poetic portrait of Berthe Morisot with a fan (1872) and the exquisite pastel image of George Moore (1879).

In the work of the painter there are works related to historical themes and major events in public life. However, it should be noted that these canvases are less successful, because problems of this kind were alien to his artistic talent, the range of ideas and ideas about life.

So, for example, an appeal to the events of the Civil War between the North and South in the United States resulted in the image of the sinking of the southern corsair ship by the northerners (The Battle of Kirsezh with Alabama, 1864), and the episode can be largely attributed to the landscape where the military ships perform the role of staffing. The Execution of Maximilian (1867), in essence, has the character of a genre sketch, devoid not only of interest in the conflict of the struggling Mexicans, but also of the very drama of the event.

The theme of modern history was touched upon by Manet in the days of the Paris Commune ("The Shooting of the Communards", 1871). A sympathetic attitude towards the Communards does credit to the author of the picture, who had never before been interested in such events. But nevertheless, its artistic value is lower than other canvases, since in fact the compositional scheme of "The Execution of Maximilian" is repeated here, and the author is limited to just a sketch that does not at all reflect the meaning of the cruel collision of two opposed worlds.

In the subsequent time, Manet no longer turned to a historical genre that was alien to him, preferring to reveal the artistic and expressive beginning in episodes, finding them in the stream of everyday life. At the same time, he carefully selected especially characteristic moments, sought out the most expressive point of view, and then reproduced them with great skill in his paintings.

The beauty of most of the creations of this period is due not so much to the significance of the event being depicted, as to the dynamism and witty observation of the author.

A wonderful example of an open-air group composition is the painting "In a Boat" (1874), where the combination of the outline of the stern of the sailing ship, the restrained energy of the steering movements, the dreamy grace of a seated lady, the transparency of the air, the feeling of the freshness of the breeze and the sliding movement of the boat creates an indescribable picture full of light joy and freshness ...

Still lifes, characteristic of different periods of his work, occupy a special niche in Manet's work. For example, the early still life "Peonies" (1864-1865) depicts blossoming red and white-pink buds, as well as flowers that are already blooming and starting to fade, dropping petals on the tablecloth covering the table. Later works are notable for easy sketching. In them, the painter tries to convey the radiance of flowers, enveloped in an atmosphere permeated with light. Such is the painting "Roses in a Crystal Glass" (1882-1883).

At the end of his life, Manet, apparently, was dissatisfied with what had been achieved and tried to return to writing large, complete plot compositions at a different level of skill. At this time, he began to work on one of the most significant paintings - "The Bar at the Folies Bergeres" (1881-1882), in which he approached a new level, to a new stage in the development of his art, interrupted by death (as you know, during while working, Manet was seriously ill). In the center of the composition there is the figure of a young woman-saleswoman, facing the viewer. A slightly tired, attractive blonde, dressed in a dark dress with a deep is shown, stands against the background of a huge mirror that occupies the entire wall, which reflects the glow of flickering light and the vague, blurred outlines of the audience sitting at the cafe tables. The woman is turned to face the audience, in which, as it were, the spectator himself is. This peculiar technique gives at first glance to the traditional picture a certain fragility, prompting a comparison of the real world and the reflected one. At the same time, the central axis of the picture is also displaced to the right corner, in which, according to the characteristic for the 1870s. admittedly, the picture frame slightly obscures the figure of a man in a top hat, reflected in the mirror, talking to a young saleswoman.

Thus, in this work, the classical principle of symmetry and stability is combined with a dynamic shift to the side, as well as with fragmentation, when a certain moment (fragment) is snatched out of a single stream of life.

It would be wrong to think that the plot of "Bar at the Folies Bergeres" is devoid of essential content and represents a kind of monumentalization of the insignificant. The figure of a young woman, but already internally tired and indifferent to the surrounding masquerade, her wandering gaze directed nowhere, aloofness from the illusory brilliance of life behind her, bring into the work a significant semantic shade that amazes the viewer with its unexpectedness.

The viewer admires the unique freshness of two roses standing on the bar in a crystal glass with sparkling edges; and there and then involuntarily arises a juxtaposition of these luxurious flowers with a rose half-withered in the stuffiness of the hall, pinned to the neckline of the saleswoman's dress. Looking at the picture, you can see the inimitable contrast between the freshness of her half-open chest and the indifferent gaze wandering through the crowd. This work is considered a programmatic one in the artist's work, since elements of all his favorite themes and genres are presented in it: portrait, still life, various lighting effects, crowd movement.

In general, the legacy left by Manet is represented by two aspects, which are especially evident in his last work. Firstly, with his work, he completes and exhausts the development of the classical realistic traditions of French art of the 19th century, and secondly, he lays in art the first shoots of those trends that will be picked up and developed by seekers of new realism in the 20th century.

The painter received full and official recognition in the last years of his life, namely in 1882, when he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor (the main award of France). Manet died in 1883 in Paris.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet, French artist, one of the founders of Impressionism, was born in 1840 in Paris.

As the son of a humble grocer who moved from Paris to Rouen, young Monet drew funny cartoons at the beginning of his career, then studied with the Rouen landscape painter Eugene Boudin, one of the creators of the plein-air realistic landscape. Buden not only convinced the future painter of the need to work in the open air, but also managed to instill in him a love of nature, careful observation and truthful transmission of what he saw.

In 1859 Monet went to Paris with the aim of becoming a real artist. His parents dreamed that he entered the School of Fine Arts, but the young man does not justify their hopes and plunges headlong into a bohemian life, acquires numerous acquaintances in an artistic environment. Completely deprived of the material support of his parents, and therefore without a livelihood, Monet was forced to join the army. However, even after returning from Algeria, where he had to carry out a difficult service, he continues to lead the same way of life. A little later he met I. Ionkind, who captivated him with his work on life sketches. And then he attends Suisse's studio, for some time studies in the studio of the then famous painter of the academic direction - M. Gleira, and also becomes close to a group of young artists (J. F. Basil, C. Pissarro, E. Degas, P. Cezanne, O Renoir, A. Sisley and others), who, like Monet himself, were looking for new ways of development in art.

The greatest influence on the aspiring painter was not the school of M. Gleir, but friendship with like-minded people, ardent critics of salon academism. It was thanks to this friendship, mutual support, the opportunity to exchange experiences and share achievements that a new painting system was born, which later received the name "impressionism".

The basis of the reform was that the work took place in nature, in the open air. At the same time, the artists painted in the open air not only sketches, but the whole picture. Directly in contact with nature, they became more and more convinced that the color of objects is constantly changing depending on the change in lighting, the state of the atmosphere, from the proximity of other objects that discard color reflexes, and many other factors. It was these changes that they sought to convey through their work.

In 1865, Monet decided to paint a large canvas "in the spirit of Manet, but in the open air." It was Breakfast on the Grass (1866), his first most significant work, depicting smartly dressed Parisians traveling out of town and sitting in the shade of a tree around a tablecloth laid on the ground. The work is characterized by the traditional character of its closed and balanced composition. However, the artist's attention is directed not so much to the opportunity to show human characters or to create an expressive plot composition, but to fit human figures into the surrounding landscape and convey the atmosphere of ease and calm rest prevailing among them. To create this effect, the artist pays great attention to the transmission of sun glare breaking through the foliage, playing on the tablecloth and dress of the young lady sitting in the center. Monet accurately captures and conveys the play of color reflexes on the tablecloths and the translucency of a light women's dress. With these discoveries, the breakdown of the old system of painting begins, emphasizing dark shadows and a dense material manner of execution.

From that time on, Monet's approach to the world became landscape. Human character, relationships between people interest him less and less. Events 1870-1871 force Monet to emigrate to London, from where he travels to Holland. Upon his return, he painted several paintings, which became programmatic in his work. These include "Impression. Sunrise "(1872)," Lilacs in the sun "(1873)," Boulevard des Capucines "(1873)," Poppy field at Argenteuil "" (1873), etc.

In 1874, some of them were exhibited at the famous exhibition organized by the Anonymous Society of Painters, Painters and Engravers, which was headed by Monet himself. After the exhibition, Monet and a group of his associates began to be called the impressionists (from the French impression - impression). By this time, the artistic principles of Monet, characteristic of the first stage of his work, had finally formed into a definite system.

In the open-air landscape Lilac in the Sun (1873), depicting two women sitting in the shade of large lilac bushes, their figures are interpreted in the same manner and with the same intent as the bushes themselves and the grass on which they sit. The figures of people are only a part of the general landscape, while the feeling of the soft warmth of early summer, the freshness of young foliage, the haze of a sunny day are conveyed with extraordinary liveliness and direct persuasiveness, not characteristic of that time.

Another painting - "Boulevard des Capucines" - reflects all the main contradictions, advantages and disadvantages of the Impressionist method. The moment captured from the stream of life in a big city is very accurately conveyed: the feeling of a dull monotonous noise of traffic, the damp transparency of the air, the rays of the February sun gliding along the bare branches of trees, a film of grayish clouds covering the blue sky ... The picture is fleeting, but still not less vigilant and noticing everything from an artist, moreover a sensitive artist who responds to all the phenomena of life. The fact that the gaze is really thrown by accident is emphasized by a thoughtful compositional
reception: the picture frame on the right, as it were, cuts off the figures of the men standing on the balcony.

The canvases of this period make the viewer feel that he himself is the protagonist of this celebration of life, filled with sunlight and the incessant hubbub of an elegant crowd.

Having settled in Argenteuil, Monet writes with great interest the Seine, bridges, light sailboats gliding along the water surface ...

The landscape fascinates him so much that, succumbing to an irresistible attraction, he builds himself a small boat and in it gets to his native Rouen, and there, amazed by the picture he saw, he splashes out his feelings in sketches depicting the surroundings of the city and the large sea ships ("Argenteuil", 1872; "Sailing boat at Argenteuil", 1873-1874).

1877 is marked by the creation of a number of canvases depicting the Gare Saint-Lazare. They outlined a new stage in the work of Monet.

Since that time, paintings-studies, distinguished by their completeness, give way to works in which the main thing is an analytical approach to what is depicted ("Gare de Saint-Lazare", 1877). The change in the painting style is associated with changes in the artist's personal life: his wife Camilla falls seriously ill, poverty falls on the family, caused by the birth of a second child.

After the death of his wife, Alice Goshede took care of the children, whose family rented the same house in Vetea as Monet. This woman later became his second wife. After some time, Monet's financial situation recovered so much that he was able to buy his own house in Giverny, where he worked for the rest of the time.

The painter subtly senses new trends, which allows him to anticipate much with amazing perspicacity.
from what will be achieved by artists of the late XIX - early XX centuries. It changes the attitude towards color and plots.
pictures. Now his attention is concentrated on the expressiveness of the color scheme of the brushstroke, in isolation from its subject correlation, and on enhancing the decorative effect. Ultimately he creates panel paintings. Simple plots 1860-1870 give way to complex motifs saturated with various associative connections: epic images of rocks, elegiac ranks of poplars (Rocks in Bel-Ile, 1866; Poplars, 1891).

This period is marked by numerous serial works: compositions "Haystacks" ("Haystack in the snow. Gloomy day", 1891; "Haystacks. End of the day. Autumn", 1891), images of Rouen Cathedral ("Rouen Cathedral at noon", 1894, etc. .), views of London ("Fog in London", 1903, etc.). Still working in an impressionistic manner and using the varied tonality of his palette, the master sets a goal - with the greatest accuracy and reliability to convey how the illumination of the same objects can change under different weather conditions during the day.

If you take a closer look at the series of paintings about the Rouen Cathedral, it becomes clear that the cathedral here is not the embodiment of the complex world of thoughts, experiences and ideals of the people of medieval France, and not even a monument of art and architecture, but a certain background, starting from which the author conveys the state of life light and atmosphere. The viewer feels the freshness of the morning breeze, the midday heat, the soft shadows of the impending evening, which are the true heroes of this series.

However, in addition to this, such paintings are unusual decorative compositions, which, thanks to involuntarily arising associative connections, give the viewer the impression of the dynamics of time and space.

Having moved with his family to Giverny, Monet spent a lot of time in the garden, engaged in its picturesque organization. This occupation so influenced the views of the artist that instead of the everyday world inhabited by people, he began to depict the mysterious decorative world of water and plants on his canvases (Irises at Giverny, 1923; Weeping Willows, 1923). Hence the views of ponds with water lilies floating in them, shown in the most famous series of his late panels ("White water lilies. Harmony of blue", 1918-1921).

Giverny became the artist's last refuge, where he died in 1926.

It should be noted that the manner of painting of the Impressionists was very different from that of the academics. The impressionists, in particular Monet and his associates, were interested in the expressiveness of the color scheme of the brushstroke in isolation from its subject correlation. That is, they painted in separate strokes, using only pure paints, not mixed on the palette, while the desired tone was formed already in the perception of the viewer. So, for the foliage of trees and grass, along with green, blue and yellow were used, giving the desired shade of green at a distance. This method gave the works of the Impressionist masters a special purity and freshness inherent only to them. Separately placed strokes created the impression of a raised and vibrating surface.

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Pierre Auguste Renoir, French painter, graphic artist and sculptor, one of the leaders of the Impressionist group, was born on February 25, 1841 in Limoges, into a poor family of a provincial tailor, whom he moved to Paris in 1845. The young Renoir's talent for everyday life was noticed by his parents quite early, and in 1854 they assigned him to a porcelain painting workshop. Visiting the workshop, Renoir simultaneously studied at the school of drawing and applied arts, and in 1862, having saved up money (earning money by painting coats of arms, curtains and fans), the young artist entered the School of Fine Arts. A little later he began to visit the workshop of C. Gleyre, where he became close friends with A. Sisley, F. Basil and C. Monet. He often visited the Louvre, studying the works of such masters as A. Watteau, F. Boucher, O. Fragonard.

Communication with a group of Impressionists leads Renoir to develop his own way of seeing. So, for example, unlike them, throughout his entire work, he turned to the image of a person as the main motive of his paintings. In addition, his work, although it was plein air, never dissolved
the plastic weight of the material world in the shimmering environment of light.

The painter's use of chiaroscuro, giving the image an almost sculptural form, makes his early works similar to the works of some realist painters, in particular G. Courbet. However, a lighter and lighter color scheme, inherent only to Renoir, distinguishes this master from his predecessors ("Mother Anthony's Tavern", 1866). An attempt to convey the natural plasticity of the movement of human figures in the open air is noticeable in many of the artist's works. In "Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his Wife" (1868) Renoir tries to show the feeling that binds a married couple strolling arm in arm: Sisley paused for a moment and gently leaned towards his wife. In this picture, with a composition reminiscent of a photographic frame, the motive of movement is still accidental and practically unconscious. However, compared to "Tavern", the figures in "Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his wife" seem more relaxed and lively. Another important point is significant: the spouses are depicted in nature (in the garden), but Renoir still lacks the experience of depicting human figures in the open air.

"Portrait of Alfred Sisley with his wife" is the artist's first step on the way to new art. The next stage in the artist's work was the painting "Bathing on the Seine" (c. 1869), where the figures of people walking along the shore, bathers, as well as boats and clumps of trees were brought together into a single whole by the light-airy atmosphere of a beautiful summer day. The painter already freely uses colored shadows and light-color reflections. His smear becomes alive and energetic.

Like C. Monet, Renoir is fond of the problem of including the human figure in the world of the environment. The artist solves this problem in the painting "The Swing" (1876), but somewhat differently than C. Monet, in whom the figures of people seem to dissolve in the landscape. Renoir introduces several key figures in his composition. The picturesque manner in which this canvas is made very naturally conveys the atmosphere of a hot summer day softened by the shadow. The picture is permeated with a feeling of happiness and joy.

In the mid-1870s. Renoir writes such works as the landscape "A Path in the Meadows" (1875), filled with light lively movement and the elusive play of bright light reflections "Moulin de la Galette" (1876), as well as "Umbrellas" (1883), "Lodge" (1874) and The End of Breakfast (1879). These beautiful canvases were created despite the fact that the artist had to work in a difficult environment, since after the scandalous exhibition of the Impressionists (1874), Renoir's work (like the work of his associates) was subject to sharp attacks from so-called art connoisseurs. However, during this difficult time, Renoir felt the support of two people close to him: his brother Edmond (publisher of the magazine La vie modern) and Georges Charpentier (owner of the weekly). They helped the artist raise a small amount of money and rent a workshop.

It should be noted that compositionally, the landscape "A Path in the Meadows" is very close to "Poppies" (1873) by C. Monet, but the picturesque texture of Renoir's canvases is distinguished by greater density and materiality. Another difference regarding the compositional solution is the sky. In Renoir, for whom the materiality of the natural world was of great importance, the sky occupies only a small part of the picture, while in Monet, who depicted the sky with gray-silver or snow-white clouds running across it, it rises above a slope dotted with blooming poppies, intensifying the feeling an airy summer day filled with sunshine.

In the compositions "Moulin de la Galette" (with her real success came to the artist), "Umbrellas", "Lodge" and "The End of Breakfast" (as in Manet and Degas), an interest in a sort of accidentally peeped out life situation is evident; also characteristic is the appeal to the method of cutting off the frame of the composite space, which is also characteristic of E. Degas and partly E. Manet. But, unlike the works of the latter, Renoir's paintings are distinguished by great calmness and contemplation.

The canvas "Lodge", in which, as if examining the rows of armchairs through binoculars, the author inadvertently bumps into a box in which a beauty is sitting with an indifferent gaze. Her companion, on the other hand, is looking at the audience with great interest. Part of his figure is cut off by the frame of the painting.

The End of Breakfast is a raucous episode: two ladies, dressed in white and black, and their beau, are finishing breakfast in a shady corner of the garden. The table is already set for coffee, which is served in cups of delicate light blue porcelain. The women are waiting for the continuation of the story, which the man interrupted in order to light a cigarette. This picture is not distinguished by drama or deep psychologism, it attracts the viewer's attention with a subtle transfer of the smallest shades of mood.

A similar feeling of calm cheerfulness permeates the Rowers' Breakfast (1881), full of light and lively movement. Eagerness and charm emanate from the figure of a pretty young lady sitting with a dog in her arms. The artist depicted his future wife in the picture. The same joyful mood, only in a slightly different refraction, is filled with the canvas "Nude" (1876). The freshness and warmth of the young woman's body contrasts with the bluish-cold fabric of the sheets and linen, which form a kind of background.

A characteristic feature of Renoir's work is that a person is deprived of the complex psychological and moral content that is characteristic of the painting of almost all realist artists. This feature is inherent not only in works like "Nude" (where the nature of the plot motive allows the absence of such qualities), but also in the portraits of Renoir. However, this does not deprive him of the charm of the canvas, which lies in the cheerfulness of the characters.

To the greatest extent, these qualities are felt in the famous portrait of Renoir "Girl with a Fan" (c. 1881). The canvas is the link that connects Renoir's early work with the later, characterized by a colder and more refined color scheme. During this period, the artist, to a greater extent than before, develops an interest in clear lines, in a clear drawing, as well as in the locality of color. The artist assigns a large role to rhythmic repetitions (a semicircle of a fan - a semicircular back of a red chair - sloping girlish shoulders).

However, all these tendencies in Renoir's painting were most fully manifested in the second half of the 1880s, when there was a disappointment in his work and impressionism in general. Having destroyed some of his works, which the artist considered "dried up", he begins to study the work of N. Poussin, turns to the drawing of J. OD Ingres. As a result, his palette acquires a special luminosity. The so-called begins. The "mother of pearl period", known to us from such works as "Girls at the Piano" (1892), "The Asleep Bather" (1897), as well as portraits of the sons - Pierre, Jean and Claude - "Gabrielle and Jean" (1895), " Coco "(1901).

In addition, from 1884 to 1887, Renoir worked on a series of versions of the large painting "Bathers". In them, he manages to achieve a clear compositional completeness. However, all attempts to revive and rethink the traditions of great predecessors, turning at the same time to a plot far from the big problems of our time, ended in failure. "Bathers" only alienated the artist from his previously direct and fresh perception of life. All this largely explains the fact that since the 1890s. Renoir's work is becoming weaker: orange-red tones begin to predominate in the color of his works, and the background, devoid of airy depth, becomes decorative and flat.

Since 1903, Renoir settled in his own house in Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he continued to work on landscapes, compositions with human figures and still lifes, in which the reddish tones already mentioned above predominate. Being seriously ill, the artist can no longer hold his hands on his own, and they are tied to his hands. However, after a while, painting has to be abandoned altogether. Then the master turns to sculpture. Together with his assistant Gino, he creates several amazing sculptures, distinguished by the beauty and harmony of silhouettes, joy and life-affirming power (Venus, 1913; The Big Washerwoman, 1917; Motherhood, 1916). Renoir died in 1919 at his estate in the Alpes-Maritimes.

Edgar Degas

Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas, French painter, graphic artist and sculptor, the largest representative of impressionism, was born in 1834 in Paris in the family of a wealthy banker. Well-off, he received an excellent education at a prestigious lyceum named after Louis the Great (1845-1852). For some time he was a student of the law faculty of the University of Paris (1853), but, feeling a craving for art, he dropped out of the university and began to attend the studio of the artist L. Lamotte (a student and follower of Ingres) and at the same time (from 1855) the School
fine arts. However, in 1856, unexpectedly for everyone, Degas left Paris and went to Italy for two years, where he studied with great interest and, like many painters, copied the works of the great masters of the Renaissance. His greatest attention is paid to the works of A. Mantegna and P. Veronese, whose inspired and colorful paintings the young artist highly appreciated.

Degas's early works (mostly portraits) are characterized by a clear and precise drawing and subtle observation, combined with an exquisitely restrained manner of writing (sketches by his brother, 1856-1857; drawing of the head of Baroness Belleli, 1859) or with an amazing truthfulness of execution (portrait of an Italian beggars, 1857).

Returning to his homeland, Degas turned to the historical theme, but gave it an interpretation that was uncharacteristic for that time. Thus, in the composition "Spartan girls challenge young men to a competition" (1860), the master, ignoring the conventional idealization of the antique plot, seeks to embody it as it could in reality. Antiquity here, as in his other canvases on a historical theme, is, as it were, passed through the prism of modernity: images of girls and boys of Ancient Sparta with angular shapes, thin bodies and sharp movements, depicted against the background of an everyday prosaic landscape, are far from classical ideas and remind in more ordinary teenagers of the Parisian suburbs than idealized Spartans.

Throughout the 1860s, a gradual formation of the creative method of a novice painter took place. In this decade, along with less significant historical canvases ("Semiramis Observing the Construction of Babylon", 1861), the artist created several portrait works in which he honed his observation and realistic skills. In this regard, the painting "Head of a Young Woman", created by
in 1867

In 1861, Degas met E. Manet and soon became a regular at the Herbois cafe, where young innovators of that time gather: C. Monet, O. Renoir, A. Sisley, etc. But if they are primarily interested in landscape and work in the open air , then Degas focuses more on the theme of the city, Parisian types. He is attracted by everything that is in motion; the static leaves him indifferent.

Degas was a very attentive observer, subtly capturing everything that is characteristic and expressive in the endless change of life phenomena. Thus, conveying the crazy rhythm of a big city, he comes to the creation of one of the variants of the genre of everyday life dedicated to the capitalist city.

In the work of this period, portraits are especially prominent, among which there are many that are classified as the pearls of world painting. Among them are a portrait of the Belleli family (c. 1860-1862), a portrait of a woman (1867), a portrait of the artist's father listening to the guitarist Pagan (c. 1872).

Some paintings from the 1870s are notable for their photographic dispassion in depicting the characters. An example is a canvas called "The Dance Lesson" (c. 1874), executed in a cold bluish tones. With amazing accuracy, the author captures the movements of the ballerinas taking lessons from the old dance master. However, there are paintings of a different nature, such as, for example, the portrait of Viscount Lepik with his daughters on the Place de la Concorde, dating back to 1873. Here, the sober prosaicity of fixation is overcome due to the pronounced dynamics of the composition and the extraordinary sharpness of the transmission of Lepik's character; in a word, this is due to the artistically sharp and sharp disclosure of the characteristically expressive beginning of life.

It should be noted that the works of this period reflect the artist's view of the event he depicts. His paintings destroy the usual academic canons. Degas' canvas Musicians of the Orchestra (1872) is built on a sharp contrast, which is created by comparing the heads of the musicians (painted in close-up) and a small figure of a dancer bowing to the audience. Interest in expressive movement and its exact copying on the canvas is also observed in the numerous sketch statuettes of dancers (we must not forget that Degas was also a sculptor), created by the master in order to capture the essence of the movement, its logic as accurately as possible.

The artist was interested in the professional character of movements, postures and gestures, devoid of any kind of poeticization. This is especially noticeable in the works devoted to horse racing ("Young jockey", 1866-1868; "Horse racing in the provinces. A carriage at the races", circa 1872; "Jockeys in front of the stands", circa 1879, etc.). In The Ride of Racehorses (1870s), an analysis of the professional side of the matter is given with almost reporter's precision. If we compare this canvas with the painting by T. Gericault "Races in Epsom", then it immediately becomes clear that, due to its obvious analyticity, Degas's work is much inferior to the emotional composition of T. Gericault. The same qualities are inherent in Degas' pastels "Ballerina on the Stage" (1876-1878), which does not belong to the number of his masterpieces.

However, despite this one-sidedness, and maybe even thanks to it, Degas's art is convincing and meaningful. In his programmatic works, he very accurately and with great skill reveals the entire depth and complexity of the inner state of the person depicted, as well as the atmosphere of alienation and loneliness in which the society of his day lives, including the author himself.

For the first time, these moods were recorded in a small canvas "Dancer in front of a photographer" (1870s), on which the artist painted a lonely figure of a dancer, frozen in a gloomy and gloomy atmosphere in a memorized pose in front of a bulky photographic apparatus. Later on, the feeling of bitterness and loneliness penetrates into such canvases as "Absinthe" (1876), "The Singer from the Cafe" (1878), "Ironers" (1884) and many others. Degas showed two lonely and indifferent to each other and to the whole world figures of a man and a woman. The dull greenish shimmer of a glass filled with absinthe emphasizes the sadness and hopelessness that shines through the woman's gaze and posture. A pale, bearded man with a puffy face is gloomy and pensive.

Degas' work is characterized by a genuine interest in the characters of people, to the peculiar features of their behavior, as well as a well-built dynamic composition that replaced the traditional one. Its main principle is to find the most expressive foreshortenings in reality itself. This distinguishes the work of Degas from the art of other impressionists (in particular, C. Monet, A. Sisley and, in part, O. Renoir) with their contemplative approach to the world around them. The artist used this principle already in his early work "Office for the reception of cotton in New Orleans" (1873), which aroused E. Goncourt's admiration for its sincerity and realism. Such are his later works "Miss Lala at Fernando's Circus" (1879) and "Dancers in the Foyer" (1879), where, within one motive, a subtle analysis of the change of diverse movements is given.

Sometimes this technique is used by some researchers in order to indicate the closeness of Degas with A. Watteau. Although both artists are indeed in some respects similar (A. Watteau also focuses on the various shades of the same movement), however, it is enough to compare A. Watteau's drawing with the violinist's movements from the above-mentioned Degas composition, and the opposite of their artistic techniques is immediately felt.

If A. Watteau tries to convey the elusive transitions from one movement to another, so to speak, semitones, then Degas, on the contrary, is characterized by an energetic and contrasting change in the motives of the movement. He is more committed to their comparison and a sharp collision, often making the figure angular. In this way, the artist tries to capture the dynamics of the development of contemporary life.

In the late 1880s - early 1890s. in the work of Degas, there is a predominance of decorative motifs, which is probably due to a certain dullness of the vigilance of his artistic perception. If in the canvases of the early 1880s, devoted to nudity ("A Woman Coming Out of the Bathroom", 1883), there is more interest in the vivid expressiveness of movement, then by the end of the decade the artist's interest was noticeably shifting towards the depiction of female beauty. This is especially noticeable in the painting "Bathing" (1886), where the painter with great skill conveys the charm of the flexible and graceful body of a young woman bent over a pelvis.

Artists have painted similar paintings before, but Degas takes a slightly different path. If the heroines of other masters have always felt the presence of the viewer, then here the painter depicts a woman, as if not caring at all about how she looks from the outside. And although such situations look beautiful and quite natural, the images in such works often approach the grotesque. After all, any postures and gestures are quite appropriate here, even the most intimate ones, they are fully justified by a functional necessity: when washing, reach the right place, unfasten the fastener on the back, slip, grab onto something.

In the last years of his life, Degas was more engaged in sculpture than painting. This is in part due to eye disease and visual impairment. He creates the same images that are present in his paintings: sculpts statuettes of ballerinas, dancers, horses. At the same time, the artist tries to convey the dynamics of movements as accurately as possible. Degas does not leave painting, which, although it fades into the background, does not completely disappear from his work.

Due to the formally expressive, rhythmic construction of compositions, a craving for a decorative-plane interpretation of images of Degas's paintings, made in the late 1880s and in the period of the 1890s. turn out to be devoid of realistic persuasiveness and become like decorative panels.

Degas spent the rest of his life in his native Paris, where he died in 1917.

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro, French painter and graphic artist, was born in 1830 on about. Saint Thomas (Antilles) in the family of a merchant. Educated in Paris, where he studied from 1842 to 1847. After completing his studies, Pissarro returned to St. Thomas and began to help his father in the store. However, this was not at all what the young man dreamed of. His interest lay far beyond the counter. Painting was the most important for him, but his father did not support his son's interest and was against him leaving the family business. A complete misunderstanding and reluctance of the family to meet halfway led to the fact that the completely desperate young man fled to Venezuela (1853). This act nevertheless influenced the adamant parent, and he allowed his son to go to Paris to study painting.

In Paris, Pissarro entered the Suisse studio, where he studied for six years (from 1855 to 1861). At the World Exhibition of Painting in 1855, the future artist discovered J. O.D. Ingres, G. Courbet, but the greatest impression on him was made by the works of C. Corot. On the advice of the latter, while continuing to attend Suisse's studio, the young painter entered the School of Fine Arts under A. Melby. At this time, he met C. Monet, with whom he painted landscapes of the environs of Paris.

In 1859, Pissarro exhibited his paintings for the first time at the Salon. His early works were written under the influence of C. Corot and G. Courbet, but gradually Pissarro comes to develop his own style. A novice painter devotes a lot of time to work in the open air. He, like other impressionists, is interested in the life of nature in motion. Pissarro pays great attention to color, which can convey not only the shape, but also the material essence of an object. To reveal the inimitable charm and beauty of nature, he uses light strokes of pure colors, which interact with each other to create a vibrant tonal range. Drawn in a cross, parallel and diagonal lines, they give the whole image an amazing sense of depth and rhythmic sound (Hay in Marley, 1871).

Painting does not bring Pissarro a lot of money, and he barely makes ends meet. In moments of despair, the artist makes attempts to break with art forever, but soon returns to creativity.

During the Franco-Prussian war, Pissarro lives in London. Together with C. Monet, he paints London landscapes from life. The artist's house in Louveciennes at this time was plundered by the Prussian invaders. Most of the paintings that remained in the house were destroyed. The soldiers spread canvases in the courtyard under their feet in the rain.

Back in Paris, Pissarro is still experiencing financial difficulties. Republic that replaced
empire, changed almost nothing in France. The bourgeoisie, impoverished after the events associated with the Commune, cannot buy paintings. At this time, Pissarro took under his patronage the young artist P. Cezanne. Together they work in Pontoise, where Pissarro creates canvases depicting the surroundings of Pontoise, where the artist lived until 1884 (Oise at Pontoise, 1873); quiet villages, stretching into the distance roads ("The road from Gisors to Pontoise under the snow", 1873; "Red roofs", 1877; "Landscape at Pontoise", 1877).

Pissarro took an active part in all eight exhibitions of the Impressionists, organized from 1874 to 1886. Possessing a pedagogical talent, the painter could find a common language with almost all novice artists, helped them with advice. Contemporaries said about him that "he can teach how to paint even stones." The talent of the master was so great that he could distinguish even the finest shades of colors where others saw only gray, brownish and green.

A special place in the work of Pissarro is occupied by canvases dedicated to the city, shown as a living organism, constantly changing depending on the light and the season. The artist had an amazing ability to see a lot and catch what others did not notice. For example, looking out of the same window, he painted 30 works depicting Montmartre (Boulevard Montmartre in Paris, 1897). The master was passionately in love with Paris, so he dedicated most of his canvases to him. The artist managed in his works to convey that unique magic that made Paris one of the greatest cities in the world. For work, the painter rented rooms on the rue Saint-Lazare, the Grands Boulevards, etc. He transferred everything he saw to his canvases ("Italian boulevard in the morning, illuminated by the sun", 1897; "French Theater Square in Paris, spring", 1898; " Opera passage in Paris ").

Among his cityscapes, there are works that depict other cities. So, in the 1890s. the master lived for a long time in Dieppe, then in Rouen. In paintings dedicated to various parts of France, he revealed the beauty of ancient squares, the poetry of alleys and ancient buildings, from which breathes with the spirit of bygone eras ("The Grand Bridge at Rouen", 1896; "Pont Boaldier at Rouen at sunset", 1896; " View of Rouen ", 1898;" Church of Saint-Jacques in Dieppe ", 1901).

Although Pissarro's landscapes do not differ in bright colors, their picturesque texture is unusually rich in various shades: for example, the gray tone of the cobblestone pavement is formed from strokes of pure pink, blue, blue, golden ocher, English red, etc. As a result, gray appears pearlescent, shimmers and glows, making the paintings look like precious stones.

Pissarro did not only create landscapes. In his work there are also genre paintings in which interest in a person is embodied.

Among the most significant are Coffee with Milk (1881), Girl with a Branch (1881), Woman with Child at the Well (1882), Market: Meat Trader (1883). Working on these works, the painter sought to streamline the brushstroke and add elements of monumentality to the compositions.

In the mid-1880s, already a mature artist, Pissarro, influenced by Seurat and Signac, became interested in divisionism and began to paint in small colored dots. In this manner, written such a work of his as "Isle of Lacroix, Rouen. Fog "(1888). However, the hobby did not last long, and soon (1890) the master returned to his former style.

In addition to painting, Pissarro worked in watercolor technique, created etchings, lithographs and drawings.
The artist died in Paris in 1903.