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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1940s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1920s Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Cotton Canvas, Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas, Board
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil, Stretcher Bars
20th Century Impressionist Art
Gouache
1930s Impressionist Art
Woodcut
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1920s Impressionist Art
Oil, Wood Panel
1920s Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor, Gouache
1950s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1910s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1930s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Watercolor
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil, Board
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1930s Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Offset
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1910s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1920s Impressionist Art
Paper, Ink
1970s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
1970s Impressionist Art
Etching
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Cotton Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Paper, Ink, Lithograph
1930s Impressionist Art
Watercolor, Gouache, Cardboard
1990s Impressionist Art
Paper, Giclée
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 1900s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
1960s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1920s Impressionist Art
Woodcut
1970s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1940s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil, Stretcher Bars
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1940s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1980s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1960s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor
1930s Impressionist Art
Cardboard, Gouache
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil