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1. Impressionism (1874)
• Modernist movement – avant-garde artists
• Pioneered independent art exhibitions (1874) as the “Anonymous
Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers,” adopted
“Impressionists” soon thereafter
• Rely on the transient, the quick and the fleeting
• Seek to capture the effects of light
• Knew shadows had color, seasons effect object
• Plein-air painting
• Landscape and still-life painting
• Impressionists prided themselves on being antiacademic and
antibourgeois

2. What was happening at the time?
• Industrialization, urbanization and increased global economic and political exchange
• Steel, electricity, chemicals and oil
• Cities grew  displaced citizens found work in factories
• Theorist and social thinker: Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
• Extensive colonization and exploration
What is MODERNISM?
- Societal changes brought a shift in artistic thinking (technology, exposure to other
cultures the world’s impermanence)
- Captures images and sensibilities of the age AND the artist’s critical examination, critique
or reflection on art itself
To quote influential American art critic, Clement Greenberg:
“The essence of Modernism lies…in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the
discipline itself—not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of
competence…Realistic, illusionistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art.
Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the
flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of pigment—were treated by the Old Masters as
negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Modernist painting has come
to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be acknowledged openly”

3. The Impressionist All-Star Lineup
Edouard Manet – the Father of Impressionism
Claude Monet – ‘Impression: Sunrise”, most committed
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Social settings
Mary Cassatt: women and children
Berthe Morisot: posed women in interior and outdoor settings
Edgar Degas: Racehorses, Bathers & Ballerinas
Berthe Morisot, Villa at the Seaside, 1874

4. Claude Monet
Impression: Sunrise Intersection of what the artist SAW and what the
1872 artist FELT
oil on canvas - Complementary color, choppy brushstrokes
1 ft. 7 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 1 1/2 in.

5. Claude Monet
Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (in Sun)
1894
oil on canvas
3 ft. 3 1/4 in. x 2 ft. 1 7/8 in.

7. What is the subject of this series of paintings?
Claude Monet
Rouen Cathedral: The Portal
1892-95
oil on canvas
each approximately 3 ft. 3 1/4 in. x 2 ft. 1 7/8 in.

8. Claude Monet
Saint-Lazare
Train Station
1877
oil on canvas
2 ft. 5 3/4 in. x 3 ft. 5 in.

9. Gustave Caillebotte
Paris: A Rainy Day URBANIZATION
1877 Baron Georges Haussman – gave Paris a
oil on canvas makeover under Napoleon III’s orders
approximately 6 ft. 9 in. x 9 ft. 9 in.

10. Berthe Morisot
Villa at the Seaside
1874
oil on canvas
1 ft. 7 3/4 in. x 2 ft. 1/8 in.

11. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Le Moulin de la Galette
1876
oil on canvas Leisure activities of the Parisian middle class
4 ft. 3 in. x 5 ft. 8 in.

13. Édouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
1882
oil on canvas
3 ft. 1 in. x 4 ft. 3 in.

14. Edgar Degas
Inspirations: Formal leisure activities, movement, photography
Ballet Rehearsal and Japanese woodblock prints
1874
oil on canvas
1 ft. 11 in. x 2 ft. 9 in.

15. Torii Kiyonaga, detail of Two Women at the Bath
JAPONISME
- With new open trade in Japan, woodblock prints had
great effect on French art and style—tea sets, folding
screens, fans, kimonos
Edgar Degas - An admiration for the beauty and exoticism of the
Japanese aesthetic
The Tub - Valued for use of diverging lines and flat forms
1886 - Familiar and intimate subjects
pastel
1 ft. 11 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 8 3/8 in.

16. Katsushika Hokusai
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
1857
color woodblock print
9 7/8 x 14 3/4 in.

17. Cassatt, Woman Bathing, etching
Mary Cassatt
The Bath
ca. 1892
oil on canvas
3 ft. 3 in. x 2 ft. 2 in.

18. John Ruskin accused Whistler of,
“flinging a pot of paint in the
public’s face”
James Abbott McNeil Whistler
Nocturne in Black and Gold
(The Falling Rocket)
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
1 ft. 11 5/8 in. x 1 ft. 6 1/2 in.

19. POST-Impressionism (1880s-
1890s)
Back to picture making rather than copying nature
• Just as the Impressionists were being taken seriously as artists, a new group
came along feeling that the Impressionists neglected too many traditional
elements in favor of capturing a fleeting moment
• Artists explore the properties and expressive qualities of formal elements
• Borrows from Impressionism in new and unique ways
• Combine Impressionist ideals (light, shading and color) with structure
• Nearing abstraction while retaining volume or depth
Cezanne, the quintessential Post-Impressionist wished to,
“make Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art
of the museums”

20. What influenced Lautrec?
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
At the Moulin Rouge
1892-1895
oil in canvas
4 ft. x 4 ft. 7 in.

22. Georges Seurat
POINTILLISM
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
1884-1886
oil on canvas
6 ft. 9 in. x 10 ft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBBOMLURSGA

27. Vincent van Gogh
The Night Café
1888 “a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad,
oil on canvas or commit a crime”
2 ft. 4 1/2 in. x 3 ft.

28. The self-portraits of Vincent van Gogh

29. Van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a
Bandaged Ear, 1889

30. Vincent van Gogh
Starry Night
1889
oil on canvas
2 ft. 5 in. x 3 ft. 1/4 in.

31. Vincent van Gogh
Starry Night
1889
oil on canvas
2 ft. 5 in. x 3 ft. 1/4 in.

34. Paul Gauguin
The Vision
after the Sermon
1888
oil on canvas
2 ft. 4 3/4 in. x 3 ft. 1/2 in.

35. Paul Gauguin
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
1897
oil on canvas
4 ft. 6 13/16 in. x 12 ft. 3 in.

36. Mount Sainte Victoire

37. Paul Cézanne
Mount Sainte-Victoire
1902-1904
oil on canvas
2 ft. 3 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 11 1/4 in.

38. “Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper
perspective so that each side of an object or a place is directed toward a
Paul Cézanne central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth…Lines perpendicular
to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface,
Mount Sainte Victoire whence the need of introducing into our light vibrations, represented by reds
and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air.” -
1885
Cezanne
oil on canvas

39. Paul Cézanne
Mount Sainte Victoire
1897
oil on canvas

40. Paul Cézanne
The Basket of Apples
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
2 ft. 3/8 in. x 2 ft. 7 in.