With Claude Monet and others, one of the originators of Impressionist landscape painting. Successful portraitist and figurative painter too.
Monet
He first suggested the Impressionist exhibitions, co-founded their collective, and wrote their charter. Yet he didn’t achieve commercial success until he was in his sixties.
Probably the only French Impressionist who died poorer than he was when he started painting, he showed five paintings at the First Impressionist Exhibition.
Reflections seen in landscapes from DĂĽrer’s pioneering watercolour, through Poussin and Turner to Monet, Sisley and Neo-Impressionists.
A prolific painter who was moderately successful in the Salon, a key influence on Impressionism, and Monet’s first mentor, yet is now almost forgotten.
Completing this river cruise, from Canaletto’s view of Westminster, through a Frost Fair, to John Constable’s Headlight Castle.
One of the five ‘fathers’ of Impressionist, his style became painterly in the 1860s and he exhibited at the Salon until 1870 and in four Impressionist Exhibitions.
Resuming the trip at Argenteuil, with Caillebotte and Monet, we pass Renoir at Chatou, La Grenouillère, on to Les Andelys, then to the sea at Honfleur, with Monet again.
Moving around changed greatly in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the advent of canals, steam ships and trains, hot air balloons, and the bicycle.
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.
