Prodigy and friend of John Singer Sargent, he was a successful portrait-painter to the wealthy and a master pastellist.
Impressionism
One of 30 artists exhibiting at the First Impressionist Exhibition, his painting was still realist, he achieved success, but died suddenly at the height of his career in 1884.
On 15 April 1874, thirty artists showed 165 works in an empty photographer’s studio in Paris. One of their paintings led to their name: Impressionists.
In Spain, Sorolla was first Naturalist, then his style loosened to resemble that of Sargent; Zorn in Sweden painted early detailed watercolours before loosening up in oils.
Pastel paintings were central to his art, from empty beach landscapes of 1869, through the ballet, to women bathing and dressing in the 1880s, and fantasy landscapes of 1892.
His most radical watercolours were painted after he closed his portrait studio in 1907, when they cam to transcend reality.
Youngest of the four women French Impressionists, she died first, and was probably the most prolific. Only known now from the portrait of her painted by her teacher, Manet.
A selection of his Impressionist paintings made during the mid-1880s before he adopted ‘pointillist’ style after becoming one of Seurat’s closest friends.
From 1853, painters of the Barbizon School continued to innovate. Then in 1865, the young Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir came to paint there.
When Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1824, it inspired the foundation of the Barbizon School, and led to Impressionism.
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