John Asaro
1990s Impressionist Figurative Prints
Offset, Lithograph
Late 20th Century American Impressionist Figurative Prints
Screen
Late 20th Century American Impressionist Figurative Prints
Screen
1990s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil, Board
1970s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings
Oil Pastel, Archival Paper
People Also Browsed
1970s Mixed Media
Mixed Media
Vintage 1950s American Mid-Century Modern Paintings
Gouache
Antique 1890s English Renaissance Prints
Paper
1970s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Late 20th Century American Posters
Paper
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Vintage 1940s American Hollywood Regency Table Lamps
Brass
21st Century and Contemporary Realist Interior Paintings
Board, Oil
1960s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Canvas, Oil
1960s American Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Masonite, Oil
Antique 1890s English Renaissance Prints
Paper
Vintage 1950s American Table Lamps
Brass
1990s Op Art Abstract Prints
Lithograph, Screen
Antique Early 1900s French Chinoiserie Armchairs
Velvet, Giltwood, Lacquer
1970s Post-Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Oil, Canvas
1980s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Casein, Archival Paper
A Close Look at Impressionist Art
Emerging in 19th-century France, Impressionist art embraced loose brushwork and plein-air painting to respond to the movement of daily life. Although the pioneers of the Impressionist movement — Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir — are now household names, their work was a radical break with an art scene led and shaped by academic traditions for around two centuries. These academies had oversight of a curriculum that emphasized formal drawing, painting and sculpting techniques and historical themes.
The French Impressionists were influenced by a group of artists known as the Barbizon School, who painted what they witnessed in nature. The rejection of pieces by these artists and the later Impressionists from the salons culminated in a watershed 1874 exhibition in Paris that was staged outside of the juried systems. After a work of Monet’s was derided by a critic as an unfinished “impression,” the term was taken as a celebration of their shared interest in capturing fleeting moments as subject matter, whether the shifting weather on rural landscapes or the frenzy of an urban crowd. Rather than the exacting realism of the academic tradition, Impressionist paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings represented how an artist saw a world in motion.
Many Impressionist painters were inspired by the perspectives in imported Japanese prints alongside these shifts in European painting — Édouard Manet drew on ukiyo-e woodblock prints and depicted Japanese design in his Portrait of Émile Zola, for example. American artists such as Mary Cassatt and William Merritt Chase, who studied abroad, were impacted by the work of the French artists, and by the late 19th century American Impressionism had its own distinct aesthetics with painters responding to the rapid modernization of cities through quickly created works that were vivid with color and light.
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