Everything influences its surroundings, and is influenced by them. In short, it all shimmers together in the light, glowing softly from within and without. It was Renoir's challenge to freeze the changing light and varying tones in pigment, an altogether bold step toward observing ordinary things under certain spell.
This pair, Monet and Renoir, continued to work together and learn from one another, painting popular river resorts and views of a bustling Paris from outdoors. While Monet attended to the changing patterns of nature, Renoir soon sought out friends and lovers as new subjects in a whole new style of portraiture. More than any of the Impressionists, he was entranced by Paris. He managed to avoid the copyist treatment of what he saw but focused instead upon appearance, allowing the viewer to respond with immediate pleasure. "Pleasure" may be described as Renoir's artistic goal, a far cry from Realism's toiling peasants and suffering souls, for example. Instead he recorded the French middle class at play in the country or at cafes and concerts in Paris.
The Impressionists considered themselves realists because they remained true to their senses, even though they disregarded many of the traditional techniques for representing whatever was "out there." They had no use for the "exact" reproduction...
The importance of rendering objects declined, while attempts to represent the subjective grew. Through Impressionism, the definition of realism was transformed into subjective realism, and the ultimate subjectivity of modem art was born.
Impressionism is classified as a movement of Fine Arts, but it also influenced other forms of artistic expression, as literature and music also evolved under this movement. Under the influence of Impressionism, recreation of objective reality was frowned upon and replaced by the response of a piece to actual experience. The Fine Arts School found this theory more suitable for blurred and often vague objects; through a flurry of short strokes of pure and bright colors. Sculpture also soon reflected this style with partially modeled volumes, and roughened surfaces to create uneven displays of light.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) and his early work "Impression: Sunrise" is identified as the source of the name for the new vivid hues and fluent brush strokes, while Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Camille Pissaro (1830-1903), Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) followed with their own unforgettable Impressions. The world of man-created images was never the same!
