Impressionism

In April 1874 about thirty painters, among them Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas and Morisot, put on their own exhibition in the studio of the photographer Nadar, without the jury of the official Salon. The critic Louis Leroy mocked Monet's Impression, Sunrise in the satirical paper Le Charivari, and the name “Impressionists” stuck; the group exhibited together eight times, until 1886. They painted outdoors to catch the changing effects of sunlight, left short, unblended brushstrokes, and set pure colours side by side with as little mixing as possible, so that they look more vivid to the eye. Japanese prints, through Japonisme, shaped many of their unusual, snapshot-like compositions. After the last group show, Seurat and Signac arranged dots of colour by rule (Pointillism), while Van Gogh and Gauguin turned to emotion and symbol; this generation came to be called Post-Impressionist, a name the critic Roger Fry spread with his 1910 London exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists.

Stand close and look at the separate strokes of colour, then take a few steps back: where do the colours blend into another colour in your eye, and when do the water, the sky or the figures appear?

• Impressionism 인상파→Same topic in Seoul
• Impressionism 印象派→Same topic in Taipei