Role of Colour in Impressionism :: Essays Papers

Role of Colour in Impressionism In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role illusion vie in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the stratagem to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needfully to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more(prenominal) clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The evaluate style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-discip word of mouthd order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasised the individuals right in self- reflectivity, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather tha n line colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear colour offered a license that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugne Delacroix. In Turners works, colour took precedence over the down-to-earth portrayal of form Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The revolution between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their utterance and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural adorn subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal t o reason. Impressionism grew out of and followed immediately after the Barbizon school. A characteristic feature of the work of the Impressionists was the application of paint in touches of mostly everlasting(a) colour rather than blended their pictures appeared more luminous and colourful nevertheless than the work of Delacroix, from whom they had learned the technique. To the modern eye, the accepted paintings of the salon artists of the day appear pale and dull.