1. What were the aims of the Impressionist painters?

2. Why is it essential to view an Impressionist painting from a distance?

3. Can you explain why both their theories of colour and their technique of painting have made this necessary?

4. What is division of colour?

5. The most evident, and the most recognized quality of the Impressionists was that their paintings were brighter than all other paintings since the sixteenth century. Due to what?

Ex. 2. Give Russian equivalents of the following:

out-of-doors; value contrasts; the range of tones; intensity of colour; division of colour; pure or primary colours; complementary tints; the flash of colour; the play of light; to heighten the effects; spontaneity of vision.

Ex. 3. Give English equivalents of the Russian words and expressions. Use them in sentences of your own:

Эффекты солнечного света, самые сильные контрасты света и тени, самые яркие краски, работать на пленэре, передача света на воде, холодный (теплый) колорит, разложение цвета, мазки, массы света и тени, движение красок, вибрация света, делать поправки.

Ex. 4. Translate the following into English:

Художника Доменико ди Томмазо дель Гирландайо знала вся Флоренция. И не только как крупного живописца. Главным делом жизни Гирландайо была фреска.Он украсил фресками многие из церквей Флоренции и окрестных городков. Есть они в знаменитой Сикстинской капелле в Риме. Сам художник выше всего ставил свою работу в церкви Санта-Мария Новелла во Флоренции (1486 – 1490). В монументальном искусстве Гирландайо придерживался тех же принципов: многие библейские эпизоды трактованы им в чисто бытовом плане. Художник так говорил о своей работе: «Теперь, после того как я проник в сущность и постиг приемы сего искусства, я жалею только о том, что мне не дают заказа покрыть изображениями все стены вокруг Флоренции».

IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). Critic Louis Leroy inadvertently coined the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

The influence of Impressionist thought spread beyond the art world, leading to Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Characteristics of impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, light colors, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, and unusual visual angles.

Impressionism also describes art done in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

Radicals in their time, early impressionists broke the picture-making rules of academic painting. They began by painting driven by colours, rather than by line, drawing from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also began from unique working methods, such as painting outside of the studio for subjects such as the still life and portrait. The techniques of impressionism gradually grew more specific to the movement, and encompassed what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing. They painted "en plein air" (outdoors) rather than in a studio as was the custom, capturing the momentary and transient aspects of sunlight.

By the last years of the 19th century, the public came to believe that these artists had captured a fresh and original vision that was highly skilled, even if it did not meet with approval of the artistic establishment. The impressionists looked to beauty in candid poses and compositions, in the play of light and in a bright and varied use of colour.

Impressionist paintings feature short, "broken" brush strokes of pure, untinted and unmixed colour. Compositions are simplified and innovative, and the emphasis is on overall effect rather than upon details. The brushstrokes increasingly became visible and part of the composition, as opposed to the then current technique of having an almost smooth surface of the canvas without visible brush strokes. Impressionism rose at the same time that other painters were also exploring methods of painting that moved away from the subjects, forms and norms that dominated the art market at that time, for example Edvard Munch.

By placing the center of artistic creation as the eye that views the subject, rather than the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which would come after, including Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and individual painters that were not part of an exact school, such as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne.

Impressionist techniques

· Short, thick strokes of paint in a sketchy way, allowing the painter to capture and emphasize the essence of the subject rather than its details.

· They left brush strokes on the canvas, adding a new dimension of familiarity with the personality of the artist for the viewer to enjoy.

· Colors with as little pigment mixing as possible, allowing the eye of the viewer to optically mix the colors as they looked at the canvas, and providing a vibrant experience for the viewer.

· Impressionists did not shade (mix with black) their colours in order to obtain darker pigments. Instead, when the artists needed darker shades, they mixed with complementary colours. (Black was used, but only as a colour in its own right.)

· They painted wet paint into the wet paint instead of waiting for successive applications to dry, producing softer edges and intermingling of color.

· Impressionist avoided the use of thin paints to create glazes which earlier artists built up carefully to produce effects. Rather, the impressionists put paint down thickly and did not rely upon layering.

· Impressionists discovered or emphasized aspects of the play of natural light, including an acute awareness of how colours reflect from object to object.

· In outdoor paintings, they boldly painted shadows with the blue of the sky as it reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness and openness that was not captured in painting previously. (Blue shadows on snow inspired the technique.)

· They worked "en plein air" (outdoors)

Previous artists occasionally used these techniques, but impressionists employed them constantly. Earlier examples are found in the works of Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, Theodore Rousseau, Gustave Courbet, Camille Corot, Eugene Boudin, and Eugène Delacroix.

Impressionists took advantage of the mid-century introduction of premixed paints in tubes (resembling modern toothpaste tubes) which allowed artists to work more spontaneously both outdoors and indoors. Previously, each painter made his or her own paints by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil.

1. What is Impressionism?

2. Where is the name of the movement derived from?

3. What are the characteristics of impressionist painting?

4. What were the changes that early impressionists brought to art?

5. How was what they did different from the previous styles?

6. Was their work approved by the public?

7. What do impressionist paintings feature?

8. What contribution did they make for the future movements?

The Impressionist Palette

This new intensive study of colour brought about a new pal­ette and a new technique. For centuries all painting had been based on three primary colours: red, blue and yellow, but sci­ence now taught the painters that though these might be prima­ry colours in pigment, they were not primary colours in light. The spectroscope and the new science of spectrum-analysis made them familiar with the fact that white light is composed of all the colours of the rainbow, which is the spectrum of sunlight. They learnt that the primary colours of light were green, orange-red, blue-violet, and that yellow — though a primary in paint was a secondary in light, because a yellow light can be produced by blending a green light with an orange-red light. On the other hand green, a secondary in paint because it can be produced by mixing yellow with blue pigment, is a primary in light. These discoveries revolutionised their ideas about colour, and the Im­pressionist painters concluded they could only hope to paint the true colour of sunlight by employing pigments which match­ed the colours of which sunlight was composed, that is to say, the tints of the rainbow. They discarded black altogether, for, modified by atmosphere arid light, they held that a true black did not exist in nature, the darkest colour was indigo, dark green, or a deep violet. They would not use a brown, but set their pal­ette with indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and violet, the nearest colours they could obtain to the seven of the solar spectrum.

The Impressionist Technique

Further, they used these colours with as little mixing as possible. Every amateur in water-colour knows that the more he mixes his paints, the more they lose in brilliancy. The same is true of oil paints. By being juxtaposed rather than blended, the colours achieved a scintillating fresh range of tones — the high-keyed radiance of daylight rather than the calculated chiaroscuro of the studio. And the transmission of light from the canvas is greatly increased. The Impressionists refrained, therefore, as much as possible from mixing colours on their palettes, and ap­plied them pure in minute touches to the canvas. If they wanted to render secondary or tertiary colours, instead of mixing two or three pigments on the palette, they would secure the desired ef­fect by juxtaposed touches of pure colours which, at a certain dis­tance, fused in the eye of the beholder and produced the effect of the tint desired. This device is known as optical mixture, because the mixing is done in the spectator's eye. Thus, whereas red and green pigment mixed on a palette will give a dull grey, the Im­pressionists produced a brilliant luminous grey by speckling a sky; say, with little points of yellow and mauve which at a dis­tance gave the effect of a pearly grey. Similarly the effect of a brilliant brown was given by the juxtaposition of a series of min­ute touches of green, red, and yellow; and this association of minute touches of three pure colours set up a quivering vibra­tion which had greater luminosity than any streak of brown pig­ment. It was an endeavour to use paints as if they were coloured light.

Various names have been given to this technique. It has been called Divisionism, because by it the tones of secondary and ter­tiary colours were divided into their constituent elements. It has been called Pointillism, because the colour was applied to the canvas in points instead of in sweeping brush strokes. It has been called Luminism, because the aim of the process is prima­rily to express the colour of light with all its sparkle and vibra­tion. This last is the best name of all, because it serves to empha­sise the new outlook of the new painters. The tendency before the Impressionists was to regard colour from the standpoint of black and white. Thus, in considering a grey, it would have been asked is it a dark grey or a light grey, does it approach black or white? The Impressionists took quite a different atti­tude and asked whether it was a bluish grey or a greenish grey or a purplish grey, or a reddish grey: in a word, not whether it was light or dark, but which colour in the solar spectrum it came closest to.

To the Impressionists shadow was not an absence of light, but light of a different quality and of different value. In their ex­haustive research into the true colours of shadows in nature, they conquered the last unknown territory in the domain of Re­alist Painting.

To sum up, then, it may be said that Impressionist Paint­ing is based on two great principles:

1. The substitution of a Simultaneous Vision that sees a scene as a whole in place of Consecutive Vision that sees nature piece by piece.

2. The substitution of a Chiaroscuro based on the colours of the solar spectrum for a Chiaroscuro based on Black and White.

This new technique, with all the research and experiment which it implies, was not the invention of one man but the out­come of the life studies of a whole group of men. Most prominent among those who brought Impressionist painting to perfection in theory and practice were Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir.