ART HISTORY
1
USE WARM GROUNDS
For many, the birth of
Impressionism marks the dawn
of modern painting as we know it.
While the approach of these late
19th-century French painters has
several precedents, not least in the
work of pioneering British artists
John Constable and JMW Turner,
Impressionism nevertheless marked
a turning point after which the
prevailing trends in classical painting
changed for good.
One of the most notable changes
was the decision to paint landscapes
en plein air in a bid to capture a
fresher, more accurate impression
of the changes in weather and light
conditions. This was aided by a switch
from the darker grounds (the base
layer of a canvas painting) of classical
painting to the lighter base coats of
the Impressionists, many of whom
often used Lead White tinted slightly
with a colour.
That ground would also play a more
visible role in the finished paintings.Alfred Sisley’s Unloading Barges at
Billancourt – featured in the Royal
Academy of Art’s new exhibition,
Gauguin and the Impressionists – is
a good example of this. Look around
the edges of the painting to identify
the warm, almost flesh-coloured
ground on which this 1877 landscape
was painted, then look closely at the
sky. That same ground shows through
in sections of the clouds, providing a
warm contrast to the cool blues and
whites, as well as helping to tie the
painting together.2
AVOID EXTRA DETAIL
The term “Impressionism”
derived from Claude Monet’s early
masterpiece Impression, Sunrise. The
meaning of the word was instructive- the aim of these artists, perhaps as
a reaction to the developing medium
of photography, was to convey an
impression of a subject, rather than
recording everything in great detail.
Unloading Barges at Billancourt
neatly demonstrates this approach.
Sisley was clearly intent on showing
the colours and shapes of the various
elements, without dialling down into
too much detail. Note how the artist
suggested the figures using
brushstrokes of the same size and
weight as those used for the sky or
the riverbank – no extra marks were
made here so the treatment is
uniform throughout.
As artists, the temptation is to add
more detail to the more intricate
parts of a subject, yet doing so can
result in the expressive feel of a work
being lost.3
MAKE EQUAL MARKS
One of the defining features of
many Impressionist paintings is the
visibility of individual paint strokes,
each applied quickly and thickly,
working alla prima. Camille Pissarro’s
1894 painting Plum Trees in Blossom,
Éragny shows this particularly well.
The development of artists’ materials
during the 19th century helped in this
respect, with tougher hog bristleABOVE Alfred Sisley,
Unloading Barges
at Billancourt,
1877, oil on
canvas, 50x65cm
RIGHT Camille
Pissarro, Plum
Trees in Blossom,
Éragny, 1894,
oil on canvas,
60x73cm © ORDRUPGAARD, COPENHAGEN. PHOTO: ANDERS SUNE BERG