American Impressionism, Realism And The Use Of Color Research Paper Example

Arguably the most popular art movement in the history of art, Impressionism began as a movement that sought to portray reality through an innovative use of light and perspective. Artists deployed looser brushstrokes as well as bold and vivid colors that amazed and shocked the viewer. The etiology of the art movement known as Impressionism traces back to the mid-nineteenth century when a group of burgeoning artists known as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. put together an exhibition in Paris. This 1874 exhibition featured the work of the founding members of the Impressionist movement, which included Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro. What unified this group of unique artists was the fact that it was autonomous from the official Salon that was held annually. These independent artists approach painting in a variety of ways, yet many observers perceived them as a unitary group that paved the way for a new art movement (Samu). One of the most revered artistic movements, Impressionist artwork limns the with vivid liveliness and captures scenes with a spontaneity that divides color and light. In 1869, Renoir and Monet proffered and codified the first Impressionist landscapes in Europe, but this style of artwork quickly diffused across various geographical contexts and eventually spread to the United States. Indeed, by the end of the nineteenth century, a very enthusiastic and an individualized group of artists who perceived themselves as Impressionist practitioners in the United States. These early American Impressionists did travel France in order to work with Claude Monet (Cooper 25). By examining the works of the first Impressionists from France as well as the works done by distinguished painters who pioneered the Impressionism movement in America, it is clear that these artists used color and light in order to reject traditional artistic styles, incorporate new ideas and technologies, and portray their vision of modernity.
Claude Monet, a pioneer of the Impressionism movement during the nineteenth century, painted light and color in a dramatic fashion that captured the ethereal year atmospheric nature of the scene. His Impression, Sunrise, showcases how color and lighting can amplify the meaning of the work as a whole and create a majestic feeling that utterly engrosses the viewer into the landscape itself. As an impressionist, Monet painted with colors in a manner that appeared as natural light while largely ignoring meticulous detail. In this painting, Monet portrayed an image of the LeHavre harbor in France using oil paints on a canvas. It is unequivocal that Monet sought to capture the natural light and the atmosphere of the moment. Indeed, the use of color and light reflects the spontaneity of the scene captured. The sun is situated within a dawn sky, colored with blue, purple, and orange hues that contrast. Because this landscape depicts a dewy morning, the rising sun colors the clouds. The contours of the boats are drawn without much shape and definition amidst the dense mist. It appears that Monet used short, dark brushstrokes to draw the water in a manner that creates motion as evidenced by the obvious ripples. Monet sought to create a sense of natural realism by painting hints of yellow and orange in the water in order to show the reflection of the sun. While the sun appears much more vivid and bright than the rest of the painting, Monet’s mastery of portraying the effects of light is underscored by the fact that if this painting lacked color the sun would be non-existent. As such, Monet used color in a manner to capture the impression of a natural scene rather than pay attention to minute details.
The visual traits seen in paintings changed as a result of the introduction of the camera and the photograph as innovative technologies that helped shape the contours and styles so evident in Impressionist paintings. The invention of photography during the nineteenth century caused a paradigm shift in the art world because of the preoccupation with capturing the real rather than the romantic and idyllic (Berger 167). In Edgar Degas’ Ballerina and Lady with a Fan, it is evident that Degas selected to depict only a portion of his subject in the image plane in order to establish a sense of intimacy by placing the viewer in the depicted scene. The viewer is situated from a particular perspective and vantage point next to a woman painted in the foreground sitting in the audience. The invention and development of photography also required photographers to utilize long exposures to capture an image, which resulted in what is called a “shutter-drag.” Many artists sought to mimic this effect in their paintings. The capacity of the camera and the photograph to capture a single moment in time where all action ceased and time was suspended. Many artists considered this technological aspect of photography to be the most intriguing element of this innovative form of art. This newfound capability enabled the artist to capture the strain in people’s muscles and faces as well as the movement and gait of a runner during a race or a horse during a horse race. Amazed by the power of photography to capture reality and stop time, which eschewed traditional paintings, Degas did a series of paintings in which, after studying photographs of horses. He painted the jockeys pulling on the reins of the horses while the horse was mid stride (Kleiner and Mamiyia 204).
The American Impressionists largely emulated the pioneers of the Impressionist movement by painting in an untraditional and unsentimental matter both in form and in content. John H. Twachtman was one of the members of the American pioneers in American Impressionism and contributed a litany of landscapes to the corpus of American Impressionist paintings. Critics lauded the progressive nature of Twachtman’s early impressionist paintings that depicted subjects using “very bravura brushwork and strongly contrasting tones with an emphasis upon rich blacks. Subjects were interpreted in a deliberately unsentimental, informal and untraditional manner,” which is evident in his portrayals of the denizens in Venice (Henry Art Museum). He unequivocally was profoundly influenced both in style and color by the French Impressionists, and his works were largely measured against the French masters, although his artwork was distinctive and idiosyncratic in style, emotion, and flair (Bomford et al 34-39). His Impressionist paintings reflect Twachtman’s penchant for realism and depicting local residents in a realistic manner through shorthand rather than glorifying and capturing the magnificent essence of the European architecture that many American artists did in a touristy fashion. Eschewing the use of transparent sunlight to accentuate the beautiful architecture, Twachtman instead depicted nature in a more abstract, denuded fashion. As such, art critics laud his painting methods because he produced very sensitive, emotional, yet natural projections through his perception of pairing complementary colors rather than using black to shade the objects depicted (Henry Art Gallery). As a result, both objectivity and sensitivity through the deployment of color and lighting was achieved.
Art critics tout the work done by Twachtman during the 1880s as his finest work and contributions to the American Impressionist movement. His seminal work entitled Windmills underscores his personal style blended with French influences in his Impressionist paintings. Initially, Twachtman produced works using more somber and darker hues in order to cover up certain paint washes using grey light to amplify a spiritual and ethereal quality about his works. This mesmerizing effect was intended to pull the viewer into the landscapes so that he or she get utterly lost in them. Once he got married in Holland, he painted several small works recording the Dutch pastoral lands. Windmills, Dordrecht, was painted in his so-called Munich manner because of the vigorous brushstrokes that he used. However, a shift in his approach to landscapes is evident through his use of color. Instead of using darker, more dreary hues, Twachtman used more sparkling and vivd tones of pale green, peach, and light blue in order to accentuate the jovial and exuberant mood. Twachtman painted the landscape from peripheral vantage point as he limns the open sky, flat vistas, and the rows of vigorous windmills deploying vigorous and aggressive brush strokes (Pohl). Thus, Twachtman eschews dark, sober tonalities in favor of lighter uses in order to elicit the warm, sunny, and happy days of his honeymoon in the Dutch countryside.
Willard Metcalfe emerged as another early American Impressionists who was part of the Ten American Painters and became a member of the American Watercolor Society in 1893 that was so famously connected to the burgeoning Impressionist movement. Metcalf has also developed a reputation in the art world for the New England landscapes he painted in connection with the Old Lyme Art Colony. He met John Twachtman during his visit to Paris, and he painted traditional depictions of peasants in the manner of the European Impressionists. However, as he continued to travel the world after returning to America from Europe in 1890, his style began to develop as he executed his landscapes with a very light palette that attracted viewers and reaped him great financial success (Chambers 21-40). In his 1906 May Night oil painting, Metcalf portrayed the home of Florence Griswold at night, which is now a museum located in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Metcalf daringly sought to depict nocturne through the use of moonlight illuminating the front facade of the Griswold House and its front lawn. The atmospheric moonlight forces the trees to cast some shadows in the foreground. The light in the house adds a sense of warmth to the nocturne image, as a female figure traverses the lawn moving towards the house while another figure sits and waits on the front porch. Both figures don long dresses painted in faint, pale hues, which further amplifies the serenity and sophistication of the work as a whole. In his distinct manner, Metcalf used color and lighting to perfect the realism of a scene that wove in Romantic tropes and sensibilities. While he mastered the Impressionist landscape in the American context, this painting underscores his mastery of color and lighting in order to create an eerie yet sophisticated dream-like effect (Chambers 116).
Unlike many of his contemporaries, William Merritt Chase engaged in diverse art styles and subject matter in addition to his Impressionist landscapes that reflect a preoccupation with capturing the real through the innovative use of light, color, and reflection. Although he mastered pastel and oil paintings, Chase also produced etchings as well as watercolor paintings that underscored how the use of color had the power to evoke a sense of nobility in the rendering of the human flesh as well as the objects being portrayed. Many art critics laud him for his exquisite portrait paintings of the members of his own family as well as of wealthier patrons. He mostly produced works depicting his wife or children in order to capture the quotidian and the menial in the lives of ordinary individual. As such, it is clear that Chase also emulated the French Impressionists in their use of light and color as well as subject matter that eschewed traditional artwork styles and forms (Cooper 45). Such influence is most evident in his landscapes that proliferated during the 1880s when the American Impressionist movement was in its nascent stages. His most well-known works were a series of landscapes that Chase painted of Central Park and Prospect Park in New York using Impressionist brush strokes and color schemes. He included human figures in the landscapes as prominent features. Women and children are scene leisurely relaxing and sitting on a park bench. Other figures lie strewn in the grass during summertime. Chase clearly captured the effect of light on the human flesh as well as on metallic surfaces such as iron and copper. Chase’s still life paintings reflect this mastery as the light beams off of water pitchers as well as bowls made out of copper (45-48).
American Impressionism developed as a result of the diffuse success the French pioneers such as Claude Monet and Degas experienced in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. The founding artists of the American movement indeed traveled to Paris and learned from the French Impressionists. As a result, they developed a similar movement in America that used color and light in order to eschew traditional art styles, harness newer technologies and innovations such as the camera and photography, and paint works that were wholly modern both in style and subject matter.

Works Cited

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