Online Lecture "European and American Impressionism: Precursors, Supporters, Heirs"

Impressionism emerged in April 1874 in Paris, when a group of young artists exhibited their paintings in an independent exhibition. Their works were based on a direct impression of reality. They freed painting from academic rules and devoted it to color and light. But the Impressionist revolution was begun by other masters, who started painting en plein air, using broad brushstrokes and admiring pure pictorial quality. The Englishmen Turner and Bonington, the Barbizon realists, Delacroix and Courbet, the Honfleur School, and even the European classics of previous centuries all took bold steps toward the art movement that in the 19th century would be called new and modern.