IMPRESSIONISM
in painting
Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867
and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches
and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic of Impressionism in
painting was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual
reality in terms of transient effects of light and colour.
The principal Impressionist painters were
Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe
Morisot, Armand Guillaumin and Frédéric Bazille, who worked together, influenced each other, and exhibited together.
These artists became dissatisfied early in their careers with academic
teaching’s emphasis on depicting a historical or mythological subject
matter with literary or anecdotal overtones. They also rejected the
conventional imaginative or idealizing treatments of academic painting.
In the late 1860s artists began painting landscapes and river scenes in
which they tried to dispassionately record the colours and forms of
objects as they appeared in natural light at a given time.