Posts Tagged ‘Impressionists’
Judging Landscape Paintings
Damar Minyak, of Kansas City (area), MO, wrote a response to the January 20, 2012 newsletter written by Robert Genn, Canadian landscape painter. It touched me because I feel very much the same way.
“History has shown that those who set themselves up as arbiters of “proper art” are wrong, almost 100% of the time. Consider as the prime example, the Impressionists, who set themselves up because the museums and “art experts” of their day refused their products. Today, it seems, almost everybody wants to pretend to the title “neoimpressionist” or “post impressionist” or “non-impressionist”, or whatso-everist. Judged shows usually mean “It all has to look like our stuff.” Virtually all of the artists I respect were the renegades of their periods. So, it remains, for my contemporaries. Being told I’m not doing it correctly just makes me smile, and say, ‘Thank you!’ “
Morisot: The Independent One
Berthe Morisot (1845-95) was the great granddaughter of Fragonard, an 18th century painter of beautiful women. She refused to study with her stuffy drawing teacher and, instead, painted en plein air with Corot. While copying a Rubens at the Louve, she met Manet, who greatly influenced her work. She, in turn, persuaded him to try open-air painting and brighter colors. She later married his younger brother and put down her brushes to care for the family.
She was treated as an equal by the other Impressionists, receiving her share of condemnation from the critics, to which she just laughed. Like Cassatt, she painted mostly women and children.
She used no outlines, only color to indicate form and volume and her style was even freer than the other Impressionists. In 1875 her works brought higher prices than those of her male colleagues. Her pictures were as pretty as Renoir’s but always had a brooding sadness.
Cassatt: Mothers and Children
Mary Cassatt (1845-1926) was the daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania business man. In those days, painting was a man’s world and her father not only discouraged her, he refused to pay for her supplies. She left the United States as soon as possible to study art in Paris. Since Victorian women were not allowed to be alone with any man except a relative, Cassatt’s only male subjects were her father and brothers.
When Degas first saw her work, he said, “There is a person who feels as I do” and soon afterward they became life long friends. She was a gifted draftsman, precisely outlined her figures, and composed excellent designs. She used the Impressionist palette of vivid hues, pale tines, golden light, and shadows tinged with color and she exhibited with them. Her trademarks were women and children.
Her wealthy friends bought paintings from Monet, Manet, Cezanne and Cassatt for their private collections. Although the French were slow to appreciate the Impressionists, with the Americans it was love at first sight!
Degas: The Ballerinas
Edgar Degas (1934-1917) was classically trained by a student of Ingres and his work shows emphasis on linear drawing and composition. three dimensional depth, and firm contours. “No art is less spontaneous than mine,” he said. The many preparatory sketches he made set him apart from the Impressionists, yet he was counted a member because of friendship with the group, commitment to contemporary subjects and his opposition to official academic painting.
Degas’ specialty was the human form in a moment of arrested motion. He took great care to show his dancers off-guard while yawning or adjusting their slippers. He painted them from oblique angles, typically clustered to one side with a large area of floor space. His nudes were shown doing utilitarian tasks, such as combing their hair, unaware of observation and off balance – as though seen “through a keyhole.”
As his eyesight failed, he turned to pastels which allowed him to draw and color at the same time. Nearly blind, he relied on his sense of touch to model wax figurines of dancers and horses which were cast in bronze after his death.