Impressionism

Before this movement, painting was a studio-bound pursuit focused on verisimilitude—creating a polished, realistic window into a scene. The Impressionists moved their easels outdoors (en plein air) to capture the "momentary." They realized that light changes by the second, meaning a cathedral or a haystack is never actually the same color twice.

By prioritizing "optical truth" over physical detail, they captured how humans actually perceive the world: as a harmony of reflected lights and movement rather than sharp, static lines. This "art of immediacy" used ordinary subject matter—picnics, street scenes, and landscapes—to argue that the present moment was as worthy of high art as any historical epic.

In the mid-19th century, the Académie des Beaux-Arts acted as a strict gatekeeper, favoring historical, religious, or mythological themes with invisible brushwork and "restrained" colors. Their annual juried show, the Salon de Paris, was the only path to commercial success. Impressionists like Monet and Renoir were routinely rejected for their "unfinished" look and contemporary subjects.

This institutional friction led to the landmark "Salon des Refusés" in 1863 and the subsequent formation of an independent society. By bypassing the Salon to host their own exhibitions, the Impressionists broke the state's monopoly on artistic taste, effectively inventing the modern concept of the "independent artist" and the "avant-garde."

The name "Impressionism" was originally an insult. In 1874, critic Louis Leroy wrote a scathing review of the group’s first independent exhibition. Mocking Claude Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise, Leroy joked that "wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape." He used the word "impression" to imply the work lacked the skill and labor required for a "real" painting.

Surprisingly, the artists embraced the label. While the group was diverse—some focused on landscapes (Monet), others on the human form (Renoir), and others on urban life (Degas)—the term "Impressionism" gave them a unified identity. It signaled their shared rebellion against the "brown" art of the past in favor of a bright, spontaneous future.

Impressionists revolutionized the physics of the canvas. Instead of blending colors on a palette to create a smooth transition, they applied "broken" brushstrokes of pure, unmixed color side-by-side. This exploited the principle of simultaneous contrast, allowing the viewer's eye to "mix" the colors at a distance, which created a shimmering, vibrating effect that mimicked natural sunlight.

Critically, "pure" Impressionism avoided the use of black paint entirely. To create shadows or dark tones, they mixed complementary colors (like blue and orange). This ensured that even the darkest parts of a painting remained luminous and full of color, reflecting their belief that shadows in nature are not black, but simply light of a different temperature.