Sorolla’s paintings of the seaside are distinctive and some of the greatest essays on light ever completed. He is not just a painter’s painter, but deserves recognition as a true modern Master.
Impressionism
There are several Russian (and Ukrainian) painters who have been claimed to have had impressionist styles, usually for a period in the late nineteenth century. Here are two of the greatest of them.
Anders Zorn earned a high reputation during his glittering career; although today he is perhaps more widely known for his buxom country-girl nudes, he is a painter’s painter.
Several Finnish painters assumed impressionist style, although in the case of Gallen-Kallela it was a step on his road to Expressionism.
Their works are rich in light and colour, strongly evocative of one of the most successful artists colonies of the nineteenth century, and include some of the most lyrical paintings of the whole century.
Grigorescu showed progressive evolution of his style, from Barbizon through Impressionism, and is the founding father of modern Romanian art.
The main German impressionist painters followed the French Impressionists, with Liebermann and Slevogt continuing to use the style well into the twentieth century.
If anyone led Impressionism during the 1860s and early 1870s, it was surely Jongkind.
From his first influence by Impressionism, van Rysselberghe explored a world of vivid light and colour, painting some of the most distinctive works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The influence of the Impressionists led Claus from rural realism to his distinctive ‘luminism’ and eventually, whilst in exile in London, to his own variant of impressionism.
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