Art 101: Impressionism

The exhibition received mixed critical reviews, with a famously biting take on Monet’s Impression, Sunrise from French critic, painter, and humorist Louis Leroy. In a review entitled “The Exhibition of the Impressionists,” Leroy wrote off the painting as nothing more than an unfinished sketch and concluded, “wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape”. The public as well as the group of artists themselves quickly adopted the term Impressionists, characterized by their utilization of bright, synthetic colors; short brushstrokes; and emphasis on the effects of light.

The Impressionists generally painted ordinary human subjects in rural or urban settings. They typically aimed to create a snapshot of the scene rather than a precise depiction. The use of short, thick brush strokes helped to capture the essence of the scene—an “impression” of the subject according to the artist— rather than its details.

Impressionists seldom physically blended colors. Rather, they laid chunks of color alongside each other which simultaneously allowed colors to ‘mix’ in the eye of the viewer while preserving the bright, vivid tones of the true colors. Impressionists also aimed to emphasize the movement of natural light and shadows. These artists paid close attention to the reflection of colors from object to object and would often render them so as to create the illusion of motion.

The advent of the Impressionist style was partly inspired by the invention of photography. It no longer made sense to focus on rendering objects as realistically as possible—artists could not easily compete with the camera’s ability to emulate reality. Impressionists instead chose to value human subjectivity and interpretation, something photography could never mimic. In many ways, this became the subject of their work as well as their process.