A Treasury of Impressionism

Fülszöveg

Impressionism is one of the most popular and important periods in French art. Following the new theories of vision inspired by the science of photography, the Impressionists painted life as they saw it, realizing that nature as seen by the naked eye is a conglomeration of small particles of light and color. Their works capture, almost for the first time in painting, the complexities of a reflection in a laké or the sea, the way the morning and evening sun creates diflerent colors on the face of a building, the true richness of a grassy texture and the crazv effect of a dappled sky. Yet the Impressionists were not only painters of landscape: they depicted people with the same freshness and realism as they did nature. Their canvasses do not portray the great events of history nor are they records of the rich and famous: they show ordinary people in the humdrum pursuits of life. A family group, a girl at her toilet, a scene in a bar, the agile and ethereal movement of a dancer, the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Impressionism is one of the most popular and important periods in French art. Following the new theories of vision inspired by the science of photography, the Impressionists painted life as they saw it, realizing that nature as seen by the naked eye is a conglomeration of small particles of light and color. Their works capture, almost for the first time in painting, the complexities of a reflection in a laké or the sea, the way the morning and evening sun creates diflerent colors on the face of a building, the true richness of a grassy texture and the crazv effect of a dappled sky. Yet the Impressionists were not only painters of landscape: they depicted people with the same freshness and realism as they did nature. Their canvasses do not portray the great events of history nor are they records of the rich and famous: they show ordinary people in the humdrum pursuits of life. A family group, a girl at her toilet, a scene in a bar, the agile and ethereal movement of a dancer, the supple and sinuous body of a horse-these are the subjects of the Impressionists. And we can all see something of ourselves and those we know in the portraits of the fresh, alert young woman, the child who tries to look like a grown-up, the stern business-man, the ageing peasant woman and the care-worn priest. Yet however well-beloved their masterpieces are to us, the Impressionists were radicals in their own day. The nude figures in Manet's Oly///pia and Déjeimer sur l'Herbe shocked the bourgeois public of the mid nineteenth century as much as Monet's s\ FieldofPoppies and Renoir's The Swing charm us today. In this lavishly-illustrated book, Nathaniel Harris sets the movement firmly in its historical context- a time of rapid social change and scientific progtess. He shows that Impressionism was at once the culmination of the search for a new vision and an inspiration for the men who were to become the pathfinders of modern art. The beautiful reproductions of almost 400 Impressionist masterpieces that supplement the text make this a real Treasury of Impressionism. Vissza