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We have chosen five. There were
forerunners to this movement, there were also-runs and there were
after-runners. There still are. A century after the last venerable
member of this remarkable assemblage died, their influence is as strong as
it ever was. In the 21st century, when an amateur takes up a palette and a
brush for the first time in their life, what are they most likely to do?
Probably, they will go to some place they have selected beforehand and
that they regard as special, set up the canvas on the location, and begin
to paint. Just as the Impressionists had begun to do it in around 1870.
Before they arrived on the scene, practically all the artist's work,
except perhaps a few sketches, would have been done in the studio. The
Impressionists changed all that. Painting, they decided, should be started
and finished on the location, so that the impression of the object in a
fleeting moment can be captured on canvas. This rule, at first quite
rigid, was to be somewhat relaxed in the years to come, as the painters
realised that some finishing touches, done in the studio, can benefit the work.
It
took the Impressionists quite a few years to gain recognition. At first
the establishment was dead against them. Today, their style of painting is
the most easily recognisable by the general public, even by those who know
next to nothing about art.
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Edgar Degas
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Edouard Manet
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Camille Pissarro |
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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Alfred Sisley |
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