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Until the middle of the 19th Century, artists only painted in studios and then only portraits, often with rigorous, stylized backgrounds. But the generation of artists following Courbet, associated with Edouard Manet soon began to paint in a more realistic way. They took their easels outdoors to paint rather than work from sketches in their studios: they wanted to capture the effects of atmosphere and sunlight on subject matter. They wanted informal, casual subjects found all around. They wanted to catch momentary effects and therefore avoided staged or arranged compositions. (See example of this school in painting below)
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They captured the effects by using short, quick brushstrokes which
resulted in paintings made up entirely of small dabs of colour,
which when viewed from a distance, blended together to create
the desired effect. Instead of grays, blacks and browns, they
would paint in blues and violets whenever possible. Short brushstrokes
created a rich texture, eschewing the straight, smooth surfaces
of the previous generation. Solid forms looked less solid, due
to this new technique of strokes and dabs of color. Edges became
blurred, no longer so rigid and precise. Usually, there was no
main focus to which the eye would be guided by perspective lines.
Because the artist worked to capture only what one could see at
a single glance, details were left out, giving the painting a
casual, almost accidental look. (Compare the painting below with
the one above)
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Before the Impressionist movement, the subject matter was mostly nobles and royalty in arranged poses, or figures of ancient Greek and Roman figures of models. This was the official style of the French Academy and stressed the importance of balanced compositions, flowing contour lines, modeled figures in ciaroscuro with noble gestures and expressions on detailed classical backdrops. These were replaced by subjects from the contemporary 19th Century scenes such as peasants in their fields, barmaids at work, women bathing, children playing in the streets, and indeed, artists painting outdoors. They no longer painted the great detail of classical paintings which were very precise and somewhat unnatural; rather, they recreated the impressions of light and darkness, the impression of colour, the impression of depth that their natural surroundings had on them.
Landscapes and paintings of everyday life, with their rough surfaces and patches of brilliant colour puzzled everyone. The public was unable to find any artistic value in their work, and impressionists were branded as lunatic attention-seekers with no training. On April 15, 1874 in Paris, these rebellious painters staged an exhibition of their works: of course, it was highly criticized and misunderstood by critics and public alike. The show, however, gave this strange group their name. Monet's had entitled one of his paintings of Le Havre "Impression: Sunrise". This title was highly mocked by the critical reviewers and, from then on, Monet and his friends were called "Impressionist painters." Though the name "Impressionist" held great contempt, the painters soon began to realize the value of this appellation. They began to discuss the importance of their instantaneous impressions in landscape painting. Among the twenty or so French impressionists were Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, the most famous landscape painters and other such as Degas, Cézanne, Corot, Manet, Caillebotte and Van Gogh.