Impressionism: a painting style

Purple shades

the shortest definition of  Impressionism

 

Introduction:
Maybe ‘purple shades’ is the shortest definition of Impressionism (as a painting style). Camille Pissarro emphasized this importance of rendering shades. Instead of the greyish shades that were mostly used, in the late 1860s the Impressionists started to use blue shades. When their painting style matured in the mid 1870s the Impressionists also started to use purple shades. Something Neo-Impressionists explicitly took over. We also see that some pre-impressionists already used some coloured shades. Armand Guillaumin maybe was the most progressive of the Impressionists, using colourfull shades in early years. At the end of this page you will find many examples of colourfull shades.

 

Greyish shades:
In most paintings shades are rendered with greyish shades.

Black shades:
Sometimes shades were rendered by very dark hues, even with bitumen black. Adviced by Diaz Renoir abandonned the use of bitumen black in the mid 1860s (R32,p12;R1,p96+100;R5,p30). Later in 1910, Auguste Renoir said during a workshop in Munich ‘Shadows are not black; no shadow is black. It always has a colour.’ (R1,p210)

Bluish shades:
In the late 1860s the Impressionists started to use blue shades, namely for the shades in the snow on a sunny day, like in these paintings of Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley.

Rendering shades:
The development of how to render shadows is central in the development of the impressionist painting style.
Rewald decribed it in this way: The quest of how to render shades occupied the Impressionists, namely in the second half of the 1860s. Manet was of the opinion that it was preferable to pass abruptly from light to shadow. But his companions at the Café Guerbois who worked en-plein-air, such as Monet and Pissarro, thought otherwise. For them shadows played a unifying role instead of dividing their paintings into zones of light and darkness. The traditional way of rendering shadows, was to render the local-colour of an object more sober. The Impressionist observed complementary colours. Especially blue seems to dominate in the shades. It became clear to them that surroundings exposed to light, influence the colours of those parts remaining in the shade. For them, shadow areas were not colourless and not simply darker, but rather dark areas with rich hues that appear in complementary colors, especially in blue. The pitchy black tones for the shadow areas of the old masters were replaced. Shadows in the snow, for example, are not black, but rather blue, due to the surroundings, the sky. Later, in 1910 Renoir explained in Munich during a workshop that shades should be rendered as if a veil was thrown over an object. He stimulated to use thin, transparant pigments. (R1,p209+210; iR59)
Itten in his study on colour wrote: The Impressionists observed nature (en-plein-air) intensively and learned that the sunlight changed the colours of the objects in nature. Monet and others worked every one or two hours on another canvas because of the change of sunlight and it’s effect on the colours. In the same way they observed shadows, that were tradionally rendered in greyish and blackish tones. They observed that the orange light of the setting sun and the reflection of the blue sky, caused bluish shadows. This was most clearly to be seen in the snow. (R72,p11+81)

Pissarro on shadows:
In 1903 Camille Pissarro wrote about his time in London (1870/71): “Though we have learned some things of Turner and Constable, they showed in their work that they had no idea how to analyse shadow.” (R6,p101;R5,p71;R116I,p130). This remark shows, that in those early years when they developed their impressionist painting style, the rendering of shadows was an important element.

Greenish shades:
But, I don’t fully agree with the remark of Pissarro↑. When we look closely at works of Constable, we see that he used greenish shades. In his famous The hay wain he used for the shadows in the field dark greens. This was already in 1821. He did the same in a tree study made around 1821. Later Monet, Rouart and Calls also rendered shadows in this way.

Purple shades:
In the mid 1870s the Impressionists started to use purple shades. I see this as one of the main characteristics of the mature impressionist painting style.

Lila shades:
When we look closely, we can see that Corot used lila shades in some early works. Already in 1826 in his View of the Forum Corot rendered lila shadows (R61,no3+p19;R119,no67). Around 1876 Béliard and Caillebotte also used lila shades.

Armand Guillaumin:
Armand Guillaumin can be seen as a key-Impressionist, but sadly he is quite forgotten. When we look at some early works we see a bold and colourfull use of shades, including lila and purple shades. In this sense he was ahead of his fellow impressionists. But, Guillaumin in the early 1870s didn’t consistently use colourfull shades.

Neo-Impressionists:
The Neo-Impressionists made an analytic study of colours. They rendered shades with pure colours, applied on the canvas with dots of paint (Pointillism) are mosaic like patches. They did so in a consistent manner. See for example these paintings of Signac and Luce.

 

Colourfull shades:
Here below you will find several examples of colourfull shades rendered by the Impressionists.

 

Sources:
Rewald (R1,p209+210); Itten (R72,p11+81); Denvir (R5); Pool (R6).
See links for other general references (=R), internet sites (=iR) and musea (=M). For other additional references (=aR) see below. See links for practical hints and abbreviations and for the subscription of the paintings.

Additional references (=aR):

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