Impressionism

 Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s in spite of harsh opposition from the art community in France. The name of the style is derived from the title of aClaude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.


Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; open composition; emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time); common, ordinary subject matter; the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience; and unusual visual angles. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature. 



The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France, listed alphabetically, were:

• Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) ;  Jean Frédéric Bazille (December 6, 1841 – November 28, 1870) was a French Impressionist painter. Many of Bazille's major works are examples of figure painting in which Bazille placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.^[1]
• Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid 1870s) (1848–1894)
• Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions) (1844–1926)
• Paul Cézanne (although he later broke away from the Impressionists) (1839–1906)
• Edgar Degas (a realist who despised the term Impressionist, but is considered one, due to his loyalty to the group) (1834–1917)
• Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927)
• Édouard Manet (who did not regard himself, nor is he generally considered, as an Impressionist, but who supported the Impressionists and was a great influence on them), (1832–1883)
• Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who embodies their aesthetic most obviously)^[17] (1840–1926)
• Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)
• Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
• Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)

Reference; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism