Impressionism

"All that is solid melts into air" (Marx and Engels, Communist

Manifesto, 1848)

"Capture your Moments" (Kodak ad, 1888)

IMPRESSIONISM – Paris, the 1870s

WHAT WAS SO “MODERN” ABOUT IT?

How can it have been avant-garde when it is so easy to like, not at all “shocking”?

(left) Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Claude Monet. 1875, o/c, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (right) Claude Monet. Self-Portrait. 1886, o/c, private collection, Paris(center) Edouard Manet, Portrait of Monet, 1880, india ink on paper, Musée Marmottan

(left) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) Color Theory, 1805-1829(center) Michel-Eugène Chevreul, color wheel, c.1860

1888—First Kodak Camera

Claude Monet: Northern Coast of France (La Manche, or English Channel),

James Whistler (American expatriate in London) - Harmony in Blue and Silver, Trouville, 1865

James Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875Oil on wood, 23 3/4 x 18 3/8 in. (60.3 x 46.6 cm) Detroit Institute of Arts

http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/rpower/archives/001951.html Information re. 1877 slander suit against John Ruskin

“I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected a coxcomb to ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”

- Ruskin, 1877 review

Gustave Courbet, Low tide, Trouville, 1865

Eugène Boudin (French, 1824-1898), (top) Vacationers on the Beach at Trouville, 1864;(bottom) Boudin,. The Beach at Deauville, 1863, oil on canvas

Painting out of doors: “en plein air”

(top) Claude Monet, The Beach at St-Address, 1867Bottom) Boudin, View of Portrieux,1865

Precursor painters – sources of Impressionism

John Constable (English), The Haywain, 1821

Constable, Cloud Study, 1822, Oil on paper laid on board,12 x 19 1/4 inchesCourtauld Institute Galleries, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851), Rain, Steam & Speed: The Great Western Railroad, exhibited in 1844 at the Royal Academy, London, oil on canvas. Romantic landscape painter studied by Claude Monet in London in1870 (in refuge from the Franco-Prussian war.

Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867) Forest of Fontainebleau, Morning, 1850“Barbison School”

Eugene Delacroix (French), (top) Tiger Hunt, 1854

(bottom) Odalisque, 1855. Oil on wood, and photographic studyORIENTALISM

“Delacroix, an alchemist of color, miraculous, profound, mysterious, sensual, awesome: explosive color and subdued color, a penetrating harmony. The gestures of man and animal. The scowl of the beast, the snufflings of animality.” Baudelaire

(left) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Madame Leblanc 1823 Oil on canvas. Metropolitan MA, New York City;

Eugène Delacroix. Self Portrait. c.1837. oïl on canvas. Louvre, Paris

Claude Monet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1866

(left) Claude Monet, Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1866, Oil on canvas. Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l’herbe, 1863

Claude Monet, La Grenouillere 1869, oil on canvas 75x100cmMetropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869 Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère ("The Frog Pond") 1869

Painted side by side at Bougival on the Seine river

• Monet, The Thames at Westminster, 1871, Oil on canvas, 47 x 72.5 cm (18 1/2 x 28 1/2"), National Gallery, London

First Impressionist Exhibition 15 April 1874: “Exhibition of the Société Anonyme of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers”

(left) Nadar (Gaspard-Felix Tournachon) (1820-1910) Nadar¹s Studio at 35 Boulevard des Capucines’ (right) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873 (31 1/4 x 23 1/4")

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise 1873

Monet, Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874Anonymous, photo of the Argenteuil Railway Bridge, c. 1895

The Impressionist Eye is, in short, the most advanced eye in human evolution

Jules Laforgue

Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, National Gallery, London

Monet, The Stroll, Camille Monet and Her Son Jean (Woman with a Parasol) 1875 Oil on canvas (39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Monet, Camille on Her Deathbed, 1879 oil on canvas 90 x 68 cm Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Monet, Rock Arch West of Etretat (The Manneport), 1883, Oil on canvas (25 3/4 x 32 in.) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Compare to photograph of Etretat cliff

Monet's home and garden at Giverny(below right) Studio constructed for the Nympheas (Water lilies) Series

Monet, Water Lilies (The Clouds) 1903 Oil on canvas (29 3/8 x 41 7/16 in.) Private collection

Monet, Haystack, Winter Effect, 1890

Monet, Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal, Dull Weather dated 1894, painted 1892Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 25 5/8 in. (100 x 65 cm) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monet/swf/ Click for information about Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, 1892-4

Monet, Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal and Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight, Harmony in Blue and Gold, dated 1894, painted 1893, Oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 28 3/4 in. Musee d'Orsay, Paris

(left) photoportrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir Frédéric Bazille, Portrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

1867, Oil on canvas, (37 x 32 1/3 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869 Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère ("The Frog Pond") 1869

Painted side by side at Bougival on the Seine river

Renoir, The Dance at the Moulin de La Galette (Montmartre), 1876

Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

Madame Charpentier and Her Children Paul and Georgette 1878, Metropolitan Museum

Renoir, Torso of a Woman in Sunlight, 1876 Fragonard, Bathers, 1756.

Berthe Morisot, Self Portrait, 1885; Manet, Portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1872

Berthe Morisot (left) and daughter, Julie Manet (right)

Morisot, The Artist's Sister and Mother, Shown at the Salon of 1870, the last Salon of the Second Empire Retouched by Manet

Morisot, Trocadero, 1872Manet, 1867 Paris World’s Fair, Trocadero

Morisot, The Cradle (sister Edma and child), 1872, o/c (Morisot married in 1874)Exhibited in the First Impressionist exhibition

Morisot, The Wet Nurse Angèle Feeding Julie Manet, 1880. Private collection

MARY CASSATT (American, 1844-1926)

Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre with Sister, 1879 and Portrait of Mary Cassatt, c. 1884

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter, 1873

Oil on canvas, 39 5/8 x 33 1/2 in. Signed, dated, and inscribed lower right: Mary S. Cassatt./Seville./1873.

Renoir, The Loge, 1874 Mary Cassatt, The Loge,

Mary Cassatt, Woman and Child Driving, o/c, 1881, Philadelphia

Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist) In the Omnibus, drypoint and aquatint in colors, series of 10, 1890-91

Suzuki Harunobu, (Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker) 1724-1770) Women and Child, woodblock print, c.1750

Ukiyo-e prints were key source for modernist 2-D pictures in form but also in content.

Mary Cassatt, The Bath, 1891

Women's Building, Sophie Hayden, architect World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago Cassatt’s Modern Woman mural: 12’- 58’ – lost

Young Women Picking Fruit of Knowledge and Science, 1892 Women’s Building, Chicago Worlds Fair