III.

Leading Figures

Édouard Manet, sometimes called the first Impressionist—although he rejected that term for his own work—showed that capturing subtle effects of light can be accomplished as effectively by the juxtaposition of bright, contrasting colours as by shadings of intermediary tones. His Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (1863, Louvre, Paris), exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, which had been organized in opposition to the salon showing of the Académie, signalled the beginning of a new era in art. The Impressionist painters organized their first independent exhibition in 1874. The 28 exhibitors were united in their common rejection of the prevailing art styles and their admiration for the bold vignette-like paintings of Manet. The term “impressionist” was first used by the journalist Leroy in the Parisian magazine Charivari to characterize derisively a painting by Claude Monet entitled Impression, Sunrise (1873, Musée Marmottan, Paris). The term was officially adopted for the Impressionists' third exhibition in 1877. Notable French contemporaries who championed the Impressionists included such literary figures as Émile Zola and Charles Baudelaire, the painter-collector Gustave Caillebotte, and the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Long accustomed to the conventional academic style, the press and public were initially hostile to the new style. During ensuing years, however, Impressionism gradually won acceptance.

The Impressionists developed individual styles and as a group benefited from their common experiments with colour. Monet alone was doctrinaire in applying what had become Impressionist theory. He painted many series of studies—the cathedral of Rouen, haystacks, a lily pond, and poplars—each study painted at different times of the day and different seasons of the year. Pissarro used a subdued palette and concentrated equally on the effects of light and on the structure of forms. Sisley, although greatly influenced by Monet, retained his own delicacy of style. Degas, who was not an orthodox Impressionist, caught the fleeting moment, especially in ballet and horse-racing scenes. Renoir preferred to paint the female form rather than pure landscapes. Morisot's subtly painted landscapes gained strength from brushwork rather than colour.

French Impressionism was widely influential. Outside France, the most marked effects of the style were seen in the work of the American painter J. A. M. Whistler, whose so-called nocturnes (1877) portray such effects as fireworks or lights shining through mist. Other artists affected by Impressionism include the Americans Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent, the Englishman Walter Sickert, the Italian Giovanni Segantini, and the Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla.

Impressionism had far-reaching effects. Painters who began as Impressionists developed other techniques, which started new movements in art. The French painters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac painted entire canvases with small dots of colour in a scientific application of Impressionist theory known as Pointillism. The Post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh were greatly influenced by the Impressionists' brilliant use of colour. Cézanne's work anticipated Cubism, while that of Gauguin and van Gogh was an early stage of Expressionism.