Many Impressionist paintings depicted the new buildings and boulevards designed by Baron Haussman. Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877 Finally, they often captured people who remain anonymous to the viewer, recreating the “chance encounter” amongst strangers that is the essence of modern social experience. They also explored the “un-posed figure,” endeavoring to depict people in their natural poses, rather than in the artificial poses of academic art and they used a quick, sketchy method of painting to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. They used a variety of techniques to create the spontaneous effect of a candid snapshot, including “cropping,” a technique borrowed from photography, where parts of the picture are arbitrarily cut off by the edges of the canvas to create the effect of an instantaneous snapshot. Modern life is fast, and always changing - and the Impressionists wanted to make their art modern by portraying an instantaneous moment in time. Impressionist Technique: Capturing a Fleeting Moment Impressionist painters answered Baudelaire’s call for an “art of modern life.” They painted images of the modern city and its suburbs, and captured the fleeting, transitory nature of modern urban life. the costumes of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the Orient.”Ĭharles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” Le Figaro, 1862īaudelaire therefore called for a new “painter of modern life” - a painter that could capture the essence of modern urban life - which he defined as “the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent,” since in the modern world, everything is constantly changing. Almost all of them make use of the costumes and furnishings of Rome. “Casting an eye over our exhibitions of modern pictures, we are struck by a general tendency among artists to dress all their subjects in the garments of the past. In a famous essay published in Le Figaro in 1863, the poet Charles Baudelaire complained that while modern life was changing rapidly, the art of the official salon was still stuck in the past: Paris was becoming “modern” almost overnight - but the art of the official Salon reflected none of this reality. Emperor Napoleon III (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) appointed Baron Haussmann to redesign the city, and entire neighborhoods were demolished to make way for new boulevards lined with restaurants, shops, and apartment blocks. ![]() Paris was undergoing rapid modernization in the 19th century, and Impressionist painters chronicled these changes. Modern Art and Modernity: Haussmann’s Paris The loose and sketchy style was intended to capture the hazy atmosphere and flickering light of the sun as it filtered through the morning fog, but Monet’s critics thought the work looked “sloppy” and “unfinished.” A hostile critic dubbed the new movement “Impressionism,” taking his cue from Monet’s title. Like most Impressionist pictures, it is an “industrial’ scene, with large ships in the background glimpsed dimly through the smog. It depicts a view of the harbor of Le Havre seen from the window of Monet’s family home. This painting was exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, and it is where the Impressionists got their name. There were eight Impressionist Exhibitions between 18, thus establishing an alternative to the authority of the Academy. ![]() Since the Salon jury regularly rejected their work, they began holding their own independent exhibitions. While Academic painting continued to look to the authority of the past, the Impressionists focused on modern urban life and while Academic painting emphasized idealization and a smooth and polished finish, Impressionist painters introduced a loose and “sketchy” style that offended public taste. Like the Realists before them, the Impressionists rebelled against the official art of the Academy. The Impressionist movement originated in Paris in the 1860s.
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