Impressionism

"All that is solid melts into air" (Marx and Engels, Communist

Manifesto, 1848)

"Capture your Moments" (Kodak ad, 1888)

Edweard Muybridge, Galloping Horse, 1878

http://youtu.be/UrRUDS1xbNs

Eadweard Muybridge, The Zoopraxiscope, presented in autumn of 1879

The private gathering that watched the first Zoopraxiscope projections at Mayfield Grange, the home of Muybridge's sponsor Leland Stanford at Palo Alto farm, in the autumn of 1879 has the distinction of being one of the earliest motion picture audiences.

Zoopraxiscope disc and detail of stencil

Etienne-Jules Marey, Photographic Gun: camera with a rotating plate capable of taking rapid sequence of separate images.(below) Marey, Pelicans in Flight, c.1882

First Kodak camera, 1888George Eastman

Celluloid Film"You press the button,

we do the rest"

(left) Drawings submitted by George Eastman's attorneys for his new camera, The Kodak.The pages show detailed views of the camera's exterior and the interior with its barrel shutter and roll-film transport designs.

(left) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) Color Theory, 1805-1829(right, above) Michel-Eugène Chevreul, color wheel, c.1860(right, below) 1888— Ad for first Kodak Camera, George Eastman

IMPRESSIONISM – Paris, the 1870sWHAT WAS SO “MODERN” ABOUT IT?

How can it have been avant-garde when now it is such a favorite of the middle classes?

(left) Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), Portrait of Claude Monet. 1875, o/c, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (right) Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), Self-Portrait,1886, o/c, private collection(center) Edouard Manet (French,1832-1883) Portrait of Monet, 1880, india ink on paper, Musée Marmottan, Paris

Claude Monet country: Northern Coast of France

(Oscar) Claude Monet, (left) A Hunter And His Dog On A Boat, 1858(right) Caricature of a man with a snuffbox, 1858 (artist was 18)

Caricature from 1855. Monet was 15.

James Whistler (American expatriate based in London) Harmony in Blue and Silver, Trouville, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 in, 1865, Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, Boston

Gustave Courbet, Low tide, Trouville, 1865

Eugène Boudin (French, 1824-1898), The Beach at Villerville, 1864, 10 x 30”

Painting out of doors: “en plein air”

(top) Claude Monet, The Beach at St-Address, 1867(bottom) Eugène Boudin, View of Portrieux, 1865

Precursor painters – sources of Impressionism

John Constable (English), The Haywain, 1821

John Constable, Cloud Study, 1822, oil on paper,12 x 19”Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851), Rain, Steam & Speed: The Great Western Railroad, exhibited in 1844 at the Royal Academy, London, oil on canvas. Romantic landscape painter studied by Claude Monet in London in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune.

Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867), Forest of Fontainebleau, Morning, 1850

“Barbison School”

(left) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Madame Leblanc 1823 Oil on canvas. Metropolitan MA, New York City; (right) Eugène Delacroix, Self Portrait. c.1837. oïl on canvas. Louvre, ParisNote gestural painting of Delacroix – signifier of speed, passion, individualismDelacroix studied optics. Both gesture and optics inform Impressionism.

(left) Claude Monet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1865-66, Oil on canvas, fragment of original, which was over 13 x 9 feet. Seated man is thought to be Courbet.(right) Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869 Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère ("The Frog Pond") 1869

Painted side by side at Bougival, a suburb of Paris on the Seine river

Claude Monet, The Thames at Westminster, 1871, oil on canvas, 47 x 72.5 cm (18 1/2 x 28 1/2"), National Gallery, London

First Impressionist Exhibition, 15 April 1874: “Exhibition of the Société Anonyme of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers”

(left) Nadar (Gaspard-Felix Tournachon) (1820-1910) Nadar’s Studio at 35 Boulevard des Capucines (right) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873 (31 1/4 x 23 1/4") A new (modern, photographic) view from above of the new (modern) Paris: one of Baron Haussmann’s new boulevards

(left) Edward and Henry Anthony, Broadway on a Rainy Day, 1859, albumen silver prints, stereograph (right) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873 (31 1/4 x 23 1/4")

Compare: Stop-action or "instantaneous" stereographic views by Anthony brothers, New York’s first manufacturers of cameras and photographic supplies, with Monet’s flickering “impression.”

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872, (19 × 25 in), Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Claude Monet, Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874Below, anonymous photographer, the Argenteuil Railway Bridge, c. 1895

The Impressionist Eye is, in short, the most advanced eye in human evolution Jules Laforgue

Claude Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, National Gallery, London

(left) Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Dawn, from Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1830-2, color woodblock, 10 x 15”(right) Claude Monet, Haystack, Sunset, 1891, oil on canvas, 28 x 36in, MFA Boston

Monet’s 23 views of haystacks (1891-2) under various light conditions is thought to be influenced by Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji. Monet owned a copy of this print by Hokusai.

“People are not sufficiently aware of how much our contemporary landscapeArtists have borrowed from these pictures, especially Monet, whom I often encounter at Bing’s in the little attic where Levy is in charge of the Japanese prints.”

Edmund de Goncourt, 1892

Monet, Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal, Dull Weather dated 1894, painted 1892Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 25 5/8 in. (100 x 65 cm) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monet/swf/ Click for information about Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, 1892-4

Monet, Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal and Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight, Harmony in Blue and Gold, dated 1894, painted 1893, Oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 28 3/4 in. Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet, Water Lilies (The Clouds) 1903 Oil on canvas (29 3/8 x 41 7/16 in.) Private collection

Monet's home and garden at Giverny(below right) Studio constructed for the Nympheas (Water lilies) Series

(left) Utagawa Hiroshige, Wisteria Blooms Over Water at Kameido, from One Hundred Views of Edo, c. 1857, color woodblock 14 x 9 in. Brooklyn MA(below) Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899, oil on canvas, Princeton University

While the Orangerie museum [Paris] was rebuilt around them for six years, Monet's waterlily paintings, too large to move, had to remain in place in the oval rooms built for them in 1927. (NYTimes, May 14, 2006)

(left) photoportrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir Frédéric Bazille, Portrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

1867, oil on canvas, (37 x 32 1/3 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869 Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère ("The Frog Pond") 1869

Painted side by side at Bougival on the Seine river

Auguste Renoir, The Dance at the Moulin de La Galette (Montmartre), 1876

(left) Auguste Renoir, Torso of a Woman in Sunlight, 1876 (Impressionism, considered first modern, democratic art movement, born out of the class revolutions that brought down the Ancien Régime) Hedonism and veiled eroticism(right) Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Bathers, 1756 (Rococo, considered the cultural epitome of French Ancien Régime swept away by the class revolutions beginning in 1789) hedonism and veiled eroticism

(right) Berthe Morisot (French, 1841-95), Self Portrait, 1885 (left) Edouard Manet, Portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1872

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle (sister Edma and child), 1872, o/c (Morisot married Eugène Manet, brother of Edouard, in 1874)Exhibited in the First Impressionist exhibition. Morisot exhibited in 7 of the 8 Impressionist exhibitions.

Berthe Morisot, The Wet Nurse Angèle Feeding Julie Manetoil on canvas, 21 x 19”, 1880. Private collection

Berthe Morisot, Woman at Her Toilette, c. 1875, oil on canvas, 23 x 31” Chicago Art Institute

(left) Auguste Renoir, The Loge, 1874 (right) Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1880

Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, 1890-1891, from series of 10 prints on the daily lives of women, drypoint and aquatint on laid paper, 17 x 11 3/4 in. Japonisme

Edgar Degas, who did collaborative works with Cassatt, admired her drawing of the back in this print: "I do not admit that a woman can draw like that."

(below) Edgar Degas, The Tub, 1886, pastel on paper, 23 x 32”(left) Katsushika Hokusai, Women at the Public Bath, from the Manga vol. I, c. 1820, color woodblock, 7 x 4” In the manga, Degas said, he found relief from Western art’s obsession with “the female form divine.” European artists continually borrowed motifs from the manga.

Both subject matter –contemporary woman bathing – and style that was considered radically anti-academic and modern, are directly influenced by Japanese art.

Mary Cassatt, In the Omnibus, drypoint and aquatint in colors, 1890-91Suzuki Harunobu, (Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker) 1724-1770) Women and Child, woodblock print, c.1750Ukiyo-e prints were key source for modernist form - flatness, rejection of Renaissance illusionism - but also in content: daily life of the middle and working classes.

Women's Building, Sophie Hayden, architect World Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago, featuring Cassatt’s Modern Woman mural: 12’- 58’ (lost)

Young Women Picking Fruit of Knowledge and Science, 1892 Women’s Building, Chicago Worlds Fair