Two basic types:
1, Impression of sunlight, shade, and colour e.g.. Monet, Renior, Pissaro, Sisley.
2, Impression of movement and movement-intime e.g.. Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec.
Since the Renaissance, painters had been concerned with a study of light but only as an aid to the explanation and definition of form.
In impressionism, form lost its importance and light became virtually the sole reason for the painting's existence. The painter sought to capture momentary effects of light and colour as the ever-changing sunlight played on the forms in a landscape or on an outdoor subject. The impressionists developed their technique from the science of light in which the spectrum of colour is divided into the pure primaries. Reasoning on these lines, painters discarded black, brown and achieved pure, brilliant colour by applying paint unmixed in very small strokes which, when viewed from a distance, were blended by the eye but retained their sparkle and luminosity.
Due to the ever-changing light conditions and the desire of the painter to capture the effects of a single movement of time, the impressionist painting was necessarily of a sketchy nature.
After cold unemotional classicism, and the gloomy brooding of Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism restored life and vitality to painting as a new age of inquiry and discovery opened - the 20th century.
Monet(1840
to 1926) was the greatest painter of truly impressionistic pictures. He,
together with Pissaro and the EnglishmanSisley, painted shimmering
effects of intense light and vibrating colour which destroyed the form of
the subject itself (c/f Turner) which was of minor importance - usually a
landscape.
Renior
(1841 to 1919) painted with a warm and colour akin to Rubens. He passed
through a period of impressionism but restored form and solidity to his work
after studying Ingres, but retained the technique of Impressionism.
Degas
(1834 to 1917) was a superb draughtsman who, through keen observation
and excellent memory, recreated gestures and movement of a movement of time.
He was influenced strongly and exploited the snapshot idea of impression to
the full. Degas was an intellectual artist of the tradition of Ingres and
a careful painstaking craftsman.
Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864 to 1901) had the uncompromising eye of the realists in his pitiless
drawings of the more sordid side of Paris life. He was an excellent, spontaneous
draughtsman producing his drawings on the spot - cafe', dance hall, circus,
etc. He was strongly influenced by the pattern of shape and colour of the
Japanese print and as a lithographer, Lautrec produced simple colourful posters
fro theaters and dance halls which were the forerunners of the modern poster.
Whistler
(1834 to 1903) was an American who lived in Paris and London and was very
much influenced by the Japanese print. He was an intellectual rather than
an emotional painter and not a true Impressionist, but was connected with
the new movement by his insistence on his right to paint as he pleased. He
carefully balanced his shapes, tones and colours in asymmetrical arrangements
which gave some hint of coming abstractions. With carefully devised and subtle
colour schemes he sought to convey a mood or feeling of the subject.
In sculpture and architecture generally and in painting outside France the close of the 19th century found each country following the final stages of its own forms of Historicism or Historical revival. To a small degree the influence of the spirit of personal vision fostered by the French painters was inspiring painters in other countries but they met with criticism and ridicule from a conservative public.