Impressionist Art
Emerging in 19th-century France, Impressionist art embraced loose brushwork and plein-air painting to respond to the movement of daily life. Although the pioneers of the Impressionist movement — Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir — are now household names, their work was a radical break with an art scene led and shaped by academic traditions for around two centuries. These academies had oversight of a curriculum that emphasized formal drawing, painting and sculpting techniques and historical themes.
The French Impressionists were influenced by a group of artists known as the Barbizon School, who painted what they witnessed in nature. The rejection of pieces by these artists and the later Impressionists from the salons culminated in a watershed 1874 exhibition in Paris that was staged outside of the juried systems. After a work of Monet’s was derided by a critic as an unfinished “impression,” the term was taken as a celebration of their shared interest in capturing fleeting moments as subject matter, whether the shifting weather on rural landscapes or the frenzy of an urban crowd. Rather than the exacting realism of the academic tradition, Impressionist paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings represented how an artist saw a world in motion.
Many Impressionist painters were inspired by the perspectives in imported Japanese prints alongside these shifts in European painting — Édouard Manet drew on ukiyo-e woodblock prints and depicted Japanese design in his Portrait of Émile Zola, for example. American artists such as Mary Cassatt and William Merritt Chase, who studied abroad, were impacted by the work of the French artists, and by the late 19th century American Impressionism had its own distinct aesthetics with painters responding to the rapid modernization of cities through quickly created works that were vivid with color and light.
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2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Cardboard
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil, Cardboard
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Drypoint, Color
Mid-19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 2000s Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
2010s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Cotton Canvas, Oil, Cardboard
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1850s Impressionist Art
Drypoint, Etching
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Artist Comments
The last light of the day dances to its own colorful beat above a quiet valley. Shades of green twinkle in the twilight as evening's edge hovers over the pond. ...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Masonite, Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
1920s Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Acrylic
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Ink
Artist Comments
Artist Maurice Dionne illustrates crowds of people walking along the street in an impressionistic representation. "Nimbus describes the luminous cloud or atmo...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Watercolor
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
1980s Impressionist Art
Lithograph
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Etching
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil
Late 18th Century Impressionist Art
Drypoint
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
1950s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1910s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil, Cardboard
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1930s Impressionist Art
Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
Artist Comments
Artist Lisa Elley depicts a glade of autumnal aspens in a rustic woodland. Once a year, she takes her fall sojourn to the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains to s...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Art
Oil
1970s Impressionist Art
Oil
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
1940s Impressionist Art
Oil
1970s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
1920s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Canvas, Acrylic
1930s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Wood Panel
Late 20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Linen, Oil
1970s Impressionist Art
Oil
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil, Board
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art
Oil, Canvas
Early 20th Century Impressionist Art
Watercolor
2010s Impressionist Art
Oil



