Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Art in the Late 19th Century

The Painting of the Last Third of the Nineteenth Century: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Introduction

The 1870s witnessed a reversal in the economy, manifested at all artistic and social levels. The failure of the Paris Commune brought about a truce, and the great industrial and financial bourgeoisie experienced its peak. However, past revolutionary episodes obliged public authorities to carry out certain reform programs, including social insurance and compulsory, free primary education. Because of this, the illustrated press multiplied, and cultural events tended to become "mass phenomena." Two factors influenced artistic life:

1. The popularization of photography and the establishment of the movement for the use of films sensibles.
2. The spread of artificial lights, first gas and then electricity.

Both emphasized the structuring element of light as a visual appearance. "Reality is not something 'tangible' but perceptible to the eye from widely varying physical conditions." Hence, Impressionism was born as one of the last nineteenth-century styles.

The Precursor: Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was the son of a senior state official and, as such, received a good education to enter the Naval Academy. After failing, he decided to study painting with the Barbizon painters and copy Titian, Tintoretto, and Velázquez, attracted especially by the Spanish school and the realist painters. His works were rejected in the Salon, resulting in the 1861 Salon des Refusés, where Manet achieved celebrity with his work Breakfast on the Grass, which became a stumbling block for considering the subject as pornography, for its formal treatment based on large patches of flat colors, violent opposition of tones, loose brushwork, and a sense of being sketchy. In 1865, he presented his Olympia, also rejected. In 1867, he opened a private exhibition of fabrics and met Berthe Morisot, who introduced him to the Impressionists. After the Franco-Prussian War, Manet gained a sound reputation and even painted alongside the young Impressionists. Manet can be seen as a bridge between realism and impressionism.