Who were the French Impressionist Painters and why was their Art Called Impressionism? (Lives of the Impressionists Podcast Ep. #1)

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For more than 150 years, as far back as the 1870s, art collectors and exhibitions around the world have featured the work of a group of French painters who came to be known as the impressionist artists, or in French, les artistes impressionistes.

Many of their names are familiar: Claude Monet, Charles Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Some were famously women painters: Marie Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès all from France.

Their paintings are similarly familiar to anyone who has visited some of the world's largest museum collections of impressionist works, from the Louvre in Paris to the Met in New York. There, in sections dedicated to French impressionism are the works of Degas including his famous studies of ballerinas: the Ballet Class of 1874, Dancers on the Stage in 1877, the Blue Dancers of 1897.

In all of his studies of ballet dancers in the late 1800s, Degas did something that the impressionists became world renowned for: emphasizing the interplay of natural light and its reflections and shadows across different objects and people's bodies.

"The Star" - L'Etoile (Degas)
In his work titled The Star, or in French L'Étoile, a solo ballet dancer on stage can be seen with arms stretched back tilting forward on one foot in the famous Penché pose, the leaning pose, with a facial expression of immersive bliss. But her expression can barely be seen because of how brightly illuminated her face is as she looks up towards the stage and ceiling lights. And as she tilts her head further to the side and floats across the stage looking up, her hair and forehead slips into the shadows that stretch across the back of the stage and that reach the back of the dancer's arms as she extends her hands outward evoking the movements of a butterfly. It's that moment and movement that Degas is able to capture, emphasizing the contrast between the performance's bright lights, on the one hand, and dramatic shadows, on the other.

Where that contrast is most obvious in how the dancer herself in a ballerina's signature white dress looks like she's gliding not only across the stage but across the painting's canvas, as if the painting is coming to life in what is truly an immersive experience.

The realism of impressionistic painting, in other words comes from the sense of movement and dynamic lighting and shadows and not from attention to the kind of detail seen in early photography of the time or in paintings that captured photographic detail. The detail the impressionists were most interested in was light and its impact on different colors, objects, people, places. As for other details like the exact type of stitching or embroidery in a dress or the patterns of a tree leaf, Degas and artists like Monet gave more a general impression, because in some sense the lighting and color was more important. And its for this reason that these artists came to be known as the Impressionist Artists.

Bonus episode #1 What made Impressionist paintings so visually distinct from other styles?

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Questions covered and answer notes:

(1) How did the Impressionists get their name, and why did some of the artists consider themselves Realists? And what's the difference between the terms--impressionism and realism?

(2)

Answer notes:

(1) Story | short, long | 1872 Claude Monet painting titled "Impression, levant" (Impression, sunrise / rising sun). Musee Marmottan Monet (Paris) | "L'Exposition des Impressionistes" [sketch artists] 1874 & writer Louis Leroy, name stuck | Sketch-like Monet versus eg Vermeer's Milkmaid. Innovation in paints and colors. |Louis Leroy/Leroi review of "L'Exposition des Impressionistes" in publication Le Charivari (April 25 1874) | Article, dialogue between two viewers critical of the work, back and forth about how there's no detail, describing the impression they get instead of a clear picture : "Then, very quietly, with my most naive air, I led him before the Ploughed Field of M. Pissarro. At the sight of this astounding landscape, the good man thought that the lenses of his spectacles were dirty. He wiped them carefully and replaced them on his nose. 'By Michalon!' he cried. 'What on earth is that?' "You see . . . frost on deeply [plowed fields]."'Those fields? That frost? But they are palette-scrapings placed uniformly on a dirty canvas. It has neither head nor tail, top nor bottom, front nor back.'"Perhaps . . . but the impression is there." And for Monet: "I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it — and what freedom, what ease of workmanship!...A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape." |

Story | Long | 1850s and 1860s Napoléon III President of France 1848-1852, emperor of France 1852-1870 title|concentration of power | 1853-1869 important eras in europe, north africa, middle east, networks, funding, IR | France, Italy, and British, formerly Dutch, Germans , Austrians | duchy of tuscany medicis 1569, 1801 napoleonic, 1814-1860, livorno genoa milan venice| UK | German states & Habsburgs Austria |industrial projects - electricity and electric lighting | art exhibitions and public art

Written by: Prof. A. H. Akhtar