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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2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Color, Lithograph
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Wood, Paint
2010s Impressionist Art
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2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
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2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Gouache
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
19th Century Impressionist Art
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21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Acrylic, Masonite
2010s Impressionist Art
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Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1960s Impressionist Art
Masonite, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
1950s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Artist Comments
Artist Onelio Marrero portrays his youngest daughter, a photographer, capturing the beauty of nature at the Morris County Arboretum in New Jersey. The painting ...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
1910s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Watercolor
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Cotton Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
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1930s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
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19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1990s Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Cotton Canvas
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil