The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of Impressionism, Essay Example

Artwork and other cultural artifacts have always reflected certain social, political, cultural, and economic contingencies and values from the epochs in which they were produced. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, western art remained dominated by academic theories inspired by the Renaissance which touted idealized painting and high art. The germination of the Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth century triggered various socioeconomic and cultural changes, which lead to a greater focus on naturalism and realism of artistic subject matter. The rejection of the high art tradition thus manifested in artwork during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Realism directly impact the Impressionism movement that spawned at the end of the nineteenth century. A group of artists identified as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers organized an exhibition in 1874 ub Paris that is viewed as the etiology of Impressionism. Edgar Degas, Claude Money, and Camille Pissarro have been designated as the founding members, united solely by its autonomy from the official Salon that took place every year. These artists conveyed diverse approaches and methodologies to paintings, yet they were contemporaries whose works appeared like sketches, unfinished yet quite progressive in the portrayal of modern life (Denvir 2). Both realism and impression affected the development of photography during the nineteenth century, as capturing a moment in time that realistically portrayed modern life became an obsession that was fueled by vast technological innovations. Cultural artifacts and artwork produced in Realism, Impressionism, and nineteenth century photography all reflect epochal concerns and idiosyncrasies in addition to socio-cultural developments despite the diversity of artistic and design principles used therein. These works further reflect how artistic principles profoundly shifting during the nineteenth century as artists navigated through a turbulent cultural terrain as processes of modernity and industrialization wrought vast changes in the western world.

Realist style of painting pervaded various genres, including portraits, history painting, landscapes, and genre paintings. Although people often conflate naturalism with realism, as manifested by landscape paintings, differences do exist. Nonetheless, realist artists favored depicting scenes of urban working-class and rural life, scenes of night clubs, cafes, and street life, in addition to a frankness when treating the sensuality and nudity of the human body. Such a gritty approach to artwork sent shockwaves amongst middle and upper class patrons of the arts, especially in France and in Victorian England.  Courbet’s 1849 painting entitled The Stonebreakers typifies realist paintings in which the plight of the poor was depicted with oil on canvas. The painting depicts two peasant figures laboring to break rocks and remove the stones from a road that is under construction. Such manual labor within the context of industrialization in which bulldozers and jackhammers are used is usually reserved for chain gangs. The figures don tattered and ripped clothing and are set against a low mountain that is commonly found in French rural villages. The hill pervades the oil campus, filling it everywhere with the exception of the upper right corner where a small area of blue sky was added. This artistic technique was done in order to amplify and isolate the manual laborers, thereby further conveying how economically trapped they are as a result of the socioeconomic bifurcation wrought by the Industrial Revolution. As such, there is a disjointed nature surrounding the laborers. The artist sought to depict the real, so he portrayed a boy that would be perceived as too young and a man viewed as too old for such arduous, back-breaking work. Doing so creates an accurate portrayal of the deprivation and abuse that was so ubiquitous in French rural life during the nineteenth century. A poignant correlation between the formal choices made by the artist and narrative is unequivocal, as the brush strokes appear rough in the same way that the stones do. The artist conveys a conscious attempt to reject the refined and polished artistic style that defined Renaissance artwork. Rather than focusing on body parts of the laborers, Courbet eschews a rejection of focusing on the traditional elements within a painting deploying an aerial point of view. He opts to focus on all parts of the painting equally, so the stones and body parts of the laborers appear to have received the same focus. This style of art clearly heralded the rejection of the ideal and the romantic as typified by Renaissance painting and sculpture portraying Classical mythology. Rather, artists liberally limned real-life scenes and the ordinary. As such, painting was stripped of universal truisms and aesthetics and embraced non-idealized, real-life situations. The function and significance of art thus shifted in the realism art movement, which subsequently influenced the impressionist movement and other more modernized styles of art.

Although realism impacted the development of Impressionism, Impressionism emerged as a representational style of art rather than relying on extremely realistic portrayals. Rather, impressionists touted an artistic discourse in which what the brain understood and what the eye perceived were incommensurate. As such, Impressionists wanted to capture the optical effects of light in order to convey atmospheric changes or the passage of time. Claude Monet’s renowned 1872 work Impression, Sunrise portrays a view of the port of Le Havre in north-western France and has been touted as one of Monet’s most poetic and sophisticated expressions of France’s efforts to recover from the Franco-Prussian War. The painting techniques and subject matter attempt to transcribe and convey the feelings initiated by a scene rather than merely rendering the specific details of the landscape itself. A key goal and characteristic of Impressionist art was to express a certain view of nature, emerging as a common motif prevalent in Impressionist paintings. Although this oil painting was deplored by critics when it was produced, it is regarded today as a poignant example of the purpose and mindset that undergirded the Impressionist movement. The painting’s imagery focuses on the serenity of a misty scene on the littoral. Slightly below the middle of the work, a small rowboat with two nebulous and indistinct figures are present in the bay. The early morning sun is portrayed rising above the foggy harbor with various boats and ships in the port. The shadows of the figures and boats in addition to the reflection of the sun is evident on the surface of the water. Monet uses lush, vivid, and bright colors in order to draw attention to the sun, which is the main focus of Monet’s painting. Various vertical facets are also evident throughout the haze of the landscape portrayed. Monet mastered the use of color and color harmony in order to draw the attention of the viewers to particular atmospheric effects when capturing a certain moment in time. The disjointed nature of the brushwork combined with the amplified color helped Monet accomplish these goals.

As realism and impressionism developed during the nineteenth century, the advent of new technologies spawned developments in photography and vice versa. The application of photography to art in the nineteenth century spawned from the ability of photography to create an exact scientific reproduction of reality, which threatened to undermine the artistic process itself. Eadweard Muybridge was hired by race owner and former California governor Leland Stanford to take a series of photographs of racehorses galloping. Stanford had placed a bet with some of his cohorts over whether a racehorse, when in stride, has all four of its hooves off the ground at the same time. On June 15, 1878, Muybridge set up a line of cameras with tripwires. As the horses ran past, each camera would take a picture for a split second. The photographs were then used to settle the debate that had persisted amongst horse owners, and Muybridge have refined extant photography methods and technologies. When published, the photographs captured a time sequence in a way that had hitherto not been seen and resembled a comic book scene.

This original artwork was inspired by the realism movement that germinated during the nineteenth century. A focus on the mundane and the quotidian was of paramount importance as Romantic and idealized notions were eschewed. Here a horse is wandering about in the countryside at nighttime. Landscapes and depictions of nature because popularized during this movement, so pastoral scenes such as this one would have been common.

Works Cited 

Denvir, Bernard. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of Impressionism. London: Thames and Hudson, 1960. Print.

Finocchio, Ross. “Nineteenth-Century French Realism”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization: Comprehensive Volume. 3rd ed. Minneapolis/St. Paul: West Pub., 1997. Print.