IMPRESSIONISM ..

- Salon of the rejects - 1863

- They were first rejected
- 2 types of artists
1. Creative genius - think outside the box → he is a poor outsider in the
society. He is not depending on anyone
2. Servers of the status quo
- 1872 first independent impressionist exhibition
-
CHARACTERISTICS:
- Natural light comes through the window
- Daily scene - normal persons
- No posed postures - Not posing figures → constructed spontaneity
- No Myths
- Color Contrast (≠ from Chiaroscuro)
- Lack of details

INVENTIONS:
1) Outdoor studio: invention of the paint tube  make paintings outside of the studio -
 research natural light and focus on what they see and know
a. Contact with nature → follow the impression of what they saw
2) New vision on perception: no linear perspective and strong dark/light contrast 
used colors instead
a. Objective: how colors appear in real day light + colors depend on the
presence of light, they change all time + capture fleeting moments of color
impressions
b. Subjective: the colors are also depending on the person who sees them 
mood that was evoked while looking at them
3) Free art from meaning: No painting of fictions – myths, religious, historical scenes
 no transmission of morals

MANET
- Gombrich tells that the 1st one (The Balcony) is flatter than the 2nd one
- The faces are very different

MORISOT - The Psyche mirror

- She doesn’t pose for the spectator → no posed postures
- Moment of intimacy - she is not naked, but we get the point
- Berger → Nude vs. naked
- naked= not wearing clothes
- nude= being naked, but foreseen
DEGAS
- No myth
- Pastel
- Un-posed postures
- In comparison with Gericault, there is less dramatism and the color is less strong +
there is more movement and tension + chiaroscuro
 - Impressionists change the way of painting - they use light because it is
considered more truthful (no contrast)

MONET
- No contrast at all
- Just light
- Because with the fresh new eye you see no depth

The conventions are really strong in our minds→ tries to make us live always in the same
way
- But the colours could be very different
- Gombrich tries to explain this, he tries to show the actual color
- The color is dependent on light, which is different in every time of the day

Roue Cathedral
- Monet did like 50 paintings of the same cathedral, portraying different moment in the
day → ≠ patterns of colors
- Breaks the conventions

INVENTION OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS

1) Invention of the paint-tubes → Outdoor studio - en plein air
2) New vision of perception → colors depend on lights
○ Objective representation of how colors changed in real life
○ subjective → express their own feelings
3) Free art from MEANING - not used to transmit morals

REACTIONS:
❖ But these characteristics are not necessary valid for everyone. For example, Degas
didn’t like to paint outside (1), he liked the city and the insides.  worked indoors
➢ Ballerinas & Sculptures
■ Impossible positions
■ Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot: This is an impression- this
position could not last long
● Very intimate scene
● Paradox: achieves illusion of spontaneity by carefully constructing
the composition
➢ Laundry girls ironing
■ No common position
■ Merciless objectivity - he doesn’t care about the person, he just wants to
give the impression of the moment
➢ According to Degas, there are endless variations of the human body

❖ Perception (2) → Cezanne thought everything was flat, so he revolutionizes the way of
painting
➢ He wanted to create more depth without using the chiaroscuro, but using the
forms → creates visual language with 3 dimensional forms
■ Fits the world to his own ideas
■ Precursor of cubism
 ■ Looks at reality, and decides that it could look very different as long as it
improves the composition
● Correct drawing
➢ He creates balanced composition, creating new rules

❖ SEURAT - He had a problem with perception too (2) → add

volume and composition → make painting monumental
again to escape volatility
➢ Pointillism: style developed, which was based on
elaborate color research → mixed colors came
together in the eyes of the spectator
■ He studied human psychology towards
colors
■ Art will not last, moments will vanish -
➢ Divisionism: put contrasting colors together, in other to let them blend in the eyes
of the beholder

❖ GAUGUIN - He missed the content (3) → to bring meaning again in a different way
➢ He portrays Christianity, but he doesn’t want to “work” for it
➢ Vision after the Serman
■ Biblical scene
■ Ignore the memories one has - in human
perception it is not true that only what is
seen is visible
● There are many images in the
memory
➢ He went to THAITI
■ To find something different
■ Relation to Japanese style
■ Research aimed to find a meaning to his
painting

❖ VAN GOGH (3) – he wanted to express and show the forgotten part of the society 
paintings as a form of self-expression
➢ Outsider of the society
➢ Painted only for 10 years, he committed suicide because his art was not
recognized
➢ He wrote many letters to his brother
➢ DAILY LIFE of ORDINARY PEOPLE

The Potato eaters (original approach)

- Colors: dark

When he moved to France he was influenced by impressionists and japanese painters

- More colorful, less detailed
- Personal approach

→ explosion of visual languages

Realism
- Depiction of the real life
- Real people, normal life of people with no important role in society
- Art is for everybody, no exclusions

Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art (pocket edition). Chapter Vision and Visions. pp.379-
427
1. On page 381-382, Gombrich describes two different type of artists from the 19th
century. What are the two types and do you think they still exist today?
- Before the 19th century, all artists had a more or less secure position in life: “there
were always altar paintings to be done, portraits to be painted”. In all these jobs he
could work on more or less pre-established lines.
- After the 19th century, the break in tradition had thrown open to them an unlimited
field of choice, but the greater the range of choice had become, the less likely it was
that the artist’s taste would coincide with that of his public.
- The break in tradition made artists lose their security  it had opened an unlimited
field of choice. Artists had to decide if
1- Follow conventions and satisfy public’s demand
2- Self-chosen isolation (following their ideas)

2. ‘[T]he history of art in the 19th century can never become the history of the most
successful and best-paid masters of that time’ (p.385). What does Gombrich want
to say with this statement? Explain it in your own words.
- It is the history of a handful of lonely men who had the courage and the persistence
to think for themselves, to examine conventions fearlessly and critically and thus to
create new possibilities for their art.
- Paris: center of this movement

3. Why is Millet’s painting The Gleaners (1857) called a Realist painting? (plate 331).
- Courbet the creator of realism wanted to “be
a pupil to no-one but nature”,
- He wanted to paint scenes from peasant life
as it really was, to paint men and woman at work in
the fields  no beauty or harmony, the peasant are
working hard
- The distribution of the figures gives stability
to the whole scene
- Dignity to these people

4. If you compare Manet’s The Balcony (1868, image 334) with Goya’s Group on a
Balcony (1810, plate 317), what is the most important difference?
- The heads of Manet’s ladies are not modelled in the traditional manner
- Method
- Monet’s heads look flat  in the open air and full light of day  rounds form
do look flat, mere colored aches
 - It looks more real than any old master work  the impression is not of
flatness, but of depth

5. Which reason does Van Gogh give in his letter to make a painting of his own
bedroom? How does Gombrich interpret it?
- He wanted the colour to be suggestive of rest or sleep — “to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the
imagination”
- He is not concerned with correct representation, but how he felt about the things he
painted  VG used colours to represent it
- He wanted to express what he felt and if distortion helped him to achieve this
aim he would use distortion
6. What do the Pre-Raphaelites and Gaugain have in common according to Gombrich
(p.424)? Can you think of a contemporary artist that follows a similar approach?

- Preraphaelites wanted directness and simplicity

- He entered in the spirit of natives and to look at things as they did
- He went to Thaiti in search of the simplicity