I can honestly say there are some Impressionists and Post-Impressionists that left quite an impression on me. In the past, 15 years ago, I was not much of a fan for their work or style. I was more, and still am, a Renaissance person at heart. But when I visited the Musée d’Orsay and after reading more about artists like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh, I started appreciating their work in a different way. Though their work are distinct in styles and vision, they are both equally responsible for influencing the direction artists would go during and after the period. In particular, Monet’s style seemed simple and not very complex. He would place colors side by side and bring about an image on the canvas. This technique is known as juxtaposing. His intention was to bring out a specific quality or create an affect, with two contrasting or opposing elements in his view. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the likenesses or differences between the elements. Thus giving familiarity to the subject. This technique would later be refined by Neo-Impressionists with pointillism which is using an arrangement of dots and blocks of color in to introduce a sense of organization and consistency. Van Gogh was introduced to this style but Monet was not a fan of this movement (Clement, 1999 and Roslak, 2007).
Monet’s 1873 “Boulevard des Capucines” is a perfect example of side by side colors placement by capturing a scene of the busy street of Parisian life. Applying very little detail, Monet uses short, quick brushstrokes to create the sense or “impression” of a crowd alive with movement in the city. Up close, the painting it all blurs together does not make sense. But step back and the images take form because your eyes mixes the paints on the canvas. Impressionism was all about color and light. And Monet went out of the studio to work directly with nature and natural settings to capture the exact color and effects of the light.
Van Gogh incorporated the techniques of impressionism but inserted more passion, emotion and expression by using color to communicate reality through personal vision. His 1888 “Starry Night Over the Rhone” captured the sparkling colors of the night sky and of the artificial lighting (gas lighting), new to the era, glow along the river. It seemed like Van Gogh features pointillism in this piece. The placement of his strokes were placed carefully on the canvas to convey the expressive value of colors. He often referenced his worked in letters to his brother.
“The starry sky painted by night, actually under a gas jet. The sky is aquamarine, the water is royal blue, the ground is mauve. The town is blue and purple. The gas is yellow and the reflections are russet gold descending down to green-bronze. On the aquamarine field of the sky the Great Bear is a sparkling green and pink, whose discreet paleness contrasts with the brutal gold of the gas. Two colourful figurines of lovers in the foreground.”
– Vincent Van Gogh, letter 1888
Monet’s style and vision allowed him to depict the effects of light and other visual effects. Whereas Van Gogh wanted to express meaning beyond the surface appearance, he painted with emotion, intellect, and the eye. But I can say these two artists, among many others, helped set the stage or planted the seed for what would be Modern art.
Technically speaking:
Sources:
Clement, Russell (1999). Neo-Impressionist Painters: A Source Book on Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Theo Van Rysselberghe, Henri Edward Cross, Charles Angrand, Maximilien Luco, and Albert Dubois-Pillet. Greenwood Press. pp. 63–235.
Roslak, Robyn (2007). Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siècle France. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company. pp. 15–36.
robertituarte 
That video was very interesting. Even professional artists skip over bits of the canvas when they paint, I would have never thought! That was the most scientific analysis of artwork that I have ever witnessed. Well now I know that I misstated something in my blog. I wrote that Impressionist paintings were known for their long, thick brushstrokes, but the art analyst pointed out that the brushstrokes were broken up. You mentioned pointillism; pointillism reminds me of those posters that are actually hundreds of small pictures combined to create a large, cohesive picture. It’s also how tv screens and computer screens work, right? Except that pixels are square instead of round, and they are confined to a grid.
I think your blog was great, but I noticed that you didn’t compare Impressionism to a different style of art. I find that Impressionism is completely different than other nineteenth century styles like Romanticism and Realism. Impressionist paintings resemble individual interpretations and experiences whereas Realism attempts to portray scenes as accurately as possible, and Romantic paintings tend to focus on scenes that inspire extreme emotions such as love and horror. What I like very much about Impressionism is that many of the paintings don’t have a narrative or moralistic purpose, they are just creative expressions.
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