Art history: Understanding impressionism – Part 8

Those who follow art and its history understand the importance in creating a work of art that depicts real life in an artificial way. Many artists are famous for the realism that their paintings provide, and others are famous for how long it captures the imagination as it presents what excites our visual senses.

This could be the form of art that is known as impressionism, which from the 19th century Paris it gained worldwide attention. The artists sought to duplicate on canvas what they saw with their eyes, but with a flair for imperfection in that detail was not of utmost importance.

The focus was mainly on the subject matter without the painting taking on a realistic looking rendition so as it may tease the senses. Painting is just what it is, a means to express what the artists sees and what those who view what he paints imagines.

The paintings always would look more detailed the further away one would observe. We see this today with computer graphics whereas the graphic is composed of thousands of pixels. If a small graphic was enlarged 100 times its size it would make little sense when you view the graphic up close. But stand at a distance far enough the graphic then is recognizable for what it is.

What comes to mind, are some of the famous Claude Monet paintings which to some at the time may have appeared as amateur, because of his particular way in which he depicted scenes in his painting. However his style was able to capture the imagination of many art lovers which in turn gave him the notoriety as one of the most famous of painters in his time and is still revered as one today.

His colors, his brush strokes, the scenes he decides as the subject for his creative arts style, is still considered the model for which many painters follow. One might say he is the father of impressionism in art.