International Year of Chemistry 2011: The Impressionists: Painting at the Time of Change

Abstract

The Impressionist landscapes, with which we are so familiar, look deceptively calm. Still, they contain hints of the major social, political, and technological upheavals that took place in 19th-century France and changed attitudes toward painterly themes and representation. Urbanization was one. A major restructuring of Paris took place under the direction of Baron Georges E. Haussmann between 1853 and 1870. Another was industrialization of the countryside, which led to major structural transformation and to changes in the way of life. Finally, there were political crises: the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871 and the subsequent Paris Commune. Although politics did not much permeate Impressionist art, the effects of industrialization on the urban and rural landscape did. The beginning of the 19th century saw a new generation of painters moving away from the idealized studio landscapes in which nature was just a background to a biblical or Greco-Roman story. For them, the landscape itself became a focus of painting. Painters went out to paint in the open air in what became known as the plein air approach. The most important group worked around the village of Barbizon, not far from Paris, and these painters are regarded as important precursors of Impressionism. It was, however, the Impressionists who became the epitome of …