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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19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Board, Charcoal
1860s Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Cardboard
1880s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1860s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Oil
19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Oil
1860s Impressionist Art
Carbon Pencil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1880s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1860s Impressionist Art
Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1880s Impressionist Art
Drypoint, Etching
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1830s Impressionist Art
Oil
19th Century Impressionist Art
Panel, Oil
1870s Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Mid-19th Century Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor
1890s Impressionist Art
Etching
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Watercolor
1870s Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor
1890s Impressionist Art
Paper, Watercolor
19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
19th Century Impressionist Art
Gouache
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1880s Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
1830s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1880s Impressionist Art
Engraving
1840s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Board
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
1880s Impressionist Art
Archival Paper, Etching
1890s Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil, Board
1870s Impressionist Art
Drypoint, Etching, Aquatint
19th Century Impressionist Art
Drypoint, Etching
1890s Impressionist Art
Etching
1880s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil, Stretcher Bars
1870s Impressionist Art
Oil