| |
| Famous artist painter Vincent van Gogh, impressionist Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir,
Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Degas and Manet. Famous Romantic artist: J.M.W.Turner, John Constable, Eugene Delacroix. Famous
Post impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and Silhouettist John Miers & others |
Click a thumb to explore a famous artist
Famous Impressionist artist
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Claude Monet |
Auguste Renoir |
Camille Pissarro |
Alfred Sisley |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| J.M.W.Turner |
Claude Loraine |
John Constable |
Eugene Delacroix |
Famous Romantic artist
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Paul Cézanne |
Paul Gauguin |
Vincent van Gogh |
John Miers |
Famous Post impressionist artist and Silhouettist
Collecting Impressionism: “Something Solid and Durable” Back to Top
In the early years of Impressionism, artists struggled to find markets for their work, and many lived hand-to-mouth.
Impressionism changed when artists quarreled with one another, withdrew from exhibitions, or, like Monet and Renoir, reverted
to a more Academic style they hoped would lure buyers. Cézanne also turned away from Impressionism, disappointed that he
hadn’t been able “to make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums.”
However, one visionary Paris art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, recognized the greatness of Impressionism as early as 1870. “A
true picture dealer should also be an enlightened patron; he should, if necessary, sacrifice his immediate interest to his
artistic convictions,” Durand-Ruel wrote. He regularly bought, sold, and promoted Impressionist paintings during the early
years. Finally, in the 1880s and ‘90s, the world the Impressionists painted began to embrace them. American collectors were
largely responsible for this reversal of fortune, buying enough paintings to keep several artists at work. The Musée de
Luxembourg in Paris mounted the first museum exhibition of Impressionist art in 1897, and an exhibition at the 1900 World
Exposition sealed the artists’ reputations. Paintings sold twenty-five years earlier for a mere fifty francs, noted
Durand-Ruel, now fetched 50,000 francs.
What caused the public’s change of heart? “Ironically,” writes art historian Ann Dumas, “the Impressionists” former status as
renegades enhanced their appeal to the connoisseurship and speculative skills of the bourgeois collector...(it was) a new art
for a new class that wanted images of the world they inhabited.”
Perhaps more crucial to its present-day popularity is the broadly appealing color, spontaneity, and freshness of
Impressionist art. Before the first exhibition in 1874, the art critic Armand Silvestre observed of these paintings, “A blond
light pervades them, and everything is gaiety, clarity, spring festivals, golden evenings or apple trees in blossom. They are
windows opening on the joyous countryside, on rivers full of pleasure boats stretching into the distance, on a sky which
shines with light mists, on the outdoor life, panoramic and charming.”
Acknowledgements
Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in collaboration with
the Denver Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum. |
|
|
|
