Impression
Subtitle: painting quickly in France, 1860-1890
By: Richard R. Brettell.
Contributors: Brettell, Richard R.; National Gallery (Great Britain); Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh.; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
Publisher: Yale University Press in association with the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New Haven; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Impressionism (Art) -- France -- Exhibitions; Painting, French -- 19th century -- Exhibitions
Genres: Exhibitions.
Description: The "point" of Impressionist art was to capture the fleeting moment, the transient effect of a certain place, person or time. Impressionist artists worked on site with speed and directness, hoping to distinguish their works with a new freshness, immediacy, and truthfulness. Yet the paintings they exhibited were in fact almost always completed in the studio later. This beautifully illustrated book investigates for the first time works that might truly be called Impressions--paintings that appear to be rapid transcriptions of shifting subjects but were nonetheless considered finished by their makers. Renowned Impressionist scholar Richard R. Brettell identifies and discusses Impressions by some of the best-known artists of the period, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Morisot, Degas, Pissarro, and Caillebotte. The book surveys the various practices of individual artists in the making, signing, exhibiting, and selling of Impressions. Brettell discusses the pictorial theories behind the paintings, the sales strategies for them, and the various forms they took, including works completed in one sitting, "apparent" Impressions, and repeated Impressions. In a concluding chapter, the author considers a small group of works by Vincent van Gogh, who painted with an almost fanatical rapidity and was the only major post-Impressionist painter to push the aesthetic of the Impression even further.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-) and index.
Catalogue of the exhibition "Impression: painting quickly in France, 1860-1890," National Gallery, London, Nov. 1, 2000-Jan. 28, 2001; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Mar. 2-May 20, 2001; and Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., June 16-Sept. 9, 2001.
Table of contents: title: The Impression in 1874; title: Painting as performance : spontaneity and its appearances in painting, and the intellectual origins of the Impression; title: Edouard Manet and performative painting; title: Claude Monet and the development of the Impression; title: Berthe Morisot and Auguste Renoir : the wetness of paint and the sketch aesthetic; title: Alfred Sisley : the Impression, graphism, and automatic writing; title: Could Edgar Degas paint an Impression; title: Gustave Caillebotte and Camille Pissarro : Impressionists without Impressions?; title: Coda : was van Gogh an Impressionist?; title: Appendix : Laforgue's essay on Impressionism.