Impressionism

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet felt the need to stray from the weighted composition, form, dark colors, and line of the previous Renaissance period. In the late 1860s, they established a painting style that was relaxed with brilliant colors and that had quick feather like brushstrokes. Renoir and Monet invented ‘Impressionism’ in which was judged harshly by the art critics and general public. The art critics noted that the paintings looked incomplete and amateurish but the artists’ decided to go forward with their unique style and paint anyway. Renoir and Monet were considered ‘radicals’ because they painted what they saw in nature and they knew that ‘Impressionism’ would become the next modern art movement. They sat next to each other at the Seine river and painted the famous luncheon spot of the, ‘La Grenouillere,’ in the summer of 1869. Their paintings were more similar than dissimilar because they learned the Impressionistic style together. (Taschen)