Impressionism And Post-Impressionism

Impressionism

The Impressionist movement originated in France in the 19th century and lasted from 1867 to 1886. Impressionists broke from traditional European painting techniques and incorporated new elements into the chemistry of color in order to achieve new levels of tone, and exact color. Impressionists created paintings that were suddenly different in how they looked because they applied paint in small touches of pure paint color rather than broad, mixed brushstrokes. This resulted in Impressionist artists having the ability to emphasize the impression of an object or subject matter. The impressionist style allows the artist to capture an image that someone might see if they only caught a quick glimpse of the image. Impressionist paintings are usually outdoor scenes with bright, vibrant colors, without an emphasis on detail. Impressionist art allows an artist to create a mood, while portraying a scene that is not realistic, but might be perceived by any spectator.

Impressionism is generally a light and spontaneous method of painting, where an artist attempts to capture the impression of light in a scene. The name of the movement was derived from one of Monet’s early works ‘Impression: Sunrise’.

The two most famous impressionist artists were Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas.

Edgar Degas was regarded to be one of the founders of impressionism although he rejected that term and preferred to be called a realist. Degas is especially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half of his work is of dancers.

One of the paintings if called La Classe De Danse (The Dance Class) of which he started in 1873 and finished in 1876.

The other half of his work was spent depicting nude paintings, one of them was called La Toilette (woman combing her hair).

Post- Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colour.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Impressionism)

Some Painters of the Post-Impressionism Era were Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seuart and Paul Cezanne.

Vincent Van Gogh is a well known painter, one of his most famous depictions was of the painting called the sunflower as you can see below Van gogh uses bright tones of colours typical to the post-impressionism era.