Impressionist Art Masters of Impressionism:

Impressionist Art

Masters Of Impressionism:

edouard manet and edgar degas

In artistic terms, the immediate aim of Impressionist artists was to render a painting or a piece of sculpture which reflected "the sense impression of the artist," meaning that a painter or sculptor of this period was heavily influenced by the events that were occurring around them. In essence, almost all Impressionist painters "were greatly concerned with the course of events in Paris," where the development of an urban industrial system was well under way between 1860 and 1880 and which created "acute political and social unrest" some seventy years after the French Revolution (Tinterow, 1994, 134). Two outstanding artists exemplify this period in France, being Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, especially in their paintings Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Bar at the Folies-Bergere and Ballet Rehearsal.

In the first painting by Manet entitled Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (1863, oil on canvas), also known as "Luncheon on the Grass," the portrayal of a nude woman seated in the woods along with two clothed men shocked the citizens of Paris for its boldness and outright exploitation of human nudity and emotional casualness. At first, this painting was thought to have "reported a true public indecency which offended many," but Manet was only attempting to express his own personal feelings toward nudity and the public display of it. The woman in this painting is obviously "not a nymph or a Venus but a modern Parisienne of dubious profession," meaning that she is probably a prostitute and from the look on her face, it is clear that she "cares little for what people think" (Pool, 1967, 245). Overall, this painting reflects the social atmosphere of Paris in the 1860's and reveals that most citizens of that city were quite open-minded when it came to sexuality and free expression, even in a location with free access to everyone. Similarly, Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882, oil on canvas) focuses on an ordinary-looking female barmaid reflected in a mirror to her right. Although she seems to be employed in a rather upscale drinking establishment, she is very reminiscent of novelist Emile Zola's Nana, whose heroine "is nothing but a meaningless consequence of an intersection between social forces that create and destroy her." In other words, this barmaid "is automatic and impersonal" and reflects the upper-class social nature of Paris with its drinkers and party-goers enjoying themselves immensely while the barmaid merely stares into oblivion as if bored to death with her surroundings and her life (Monan, 2006, 435).

In contrast to these two paintings by Manet, Edgar Degas' Ballet Rehearsal (1876, oil on canvas) presents "the infinite variety of particular movements that make up continuous motion" via a group of ballerinas practicing their moves in a spacious studio somewhere in Paris. Obviously, the ballerinas in this painting are part of the upper classes. Artistically, Degas used several devices to bring the viewer into the pictorial space. First, the frame cuts off the spiral staircase, the windows in the background and the group of ballerinas in the right foreground. Second, the rapid diagonals of the bases of the walls and the floorboards "carry the viewer into and along with the directional lines" of the dancers," and third, the large, off-center empty space in the foreground "creates the illusion of a continuous floor that extends almost into infinity" (Muller, 1974, 312).