Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition , emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities often accentuating the effects of the passage of time , ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience.
Impressionism originated with a group of Paris -based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the s and s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant Impression, Sunrise , which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review of the First Impressionist Exhibition published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.
Radicals in their time, the early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They also painted realistic scenes of everyday life in natural settings, often outdoors, attempting to capture a moment as experienced. Previously, paintings were accomplished in studio, whether landscape art , still life or portrait , with an emphasis on verisimilitude. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colourβnot blended smoothly or shaded, as was customaryβto achieve an effect of intense colour vibration.
Impressionism emerged in France at the same time that a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli , and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting. The Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it is an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of colour.
The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style.
