Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

On The Bank of The Seine, Bennecourt

            I found the lecture about impressionism and post-impressionism very interesting.  In the Impressionism period you saw many artists focus on what the eye sees instead of their imagination. A lot of these paintings were done simply by observing the environment, or the activities of people.  Most of the paintings done in impressionism were from the middle class point of view, observing them enjoying leisure activities.  But instead of making it realistic, they painted impressions of what the eye saw, giving way to the name impressionism.  In post-impressionism artists began to drift away from observatory paintings of the environment and began to express their thoughts and feelings more through a free interpretation of nature.  To express thoughts deeper than just what the eye can see, with more of an insightful way to paint and interpret things.  Two pieces that I feel really capture the qualities of both periods beautifully are Claude Monet’s On The Bank of The Seine, Bennecourt, and Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

The Starry Night

             
              In Monet’s painting you can clearly see that it is his impression of a woman under a tree looking over a lake near a town.  He uses small dabs of color closely placed next to one another to give the look of brush strokes, something that was a common painting style in this era.  He also uses a strong emphasis of light and color to really make this painting come to life.  You can get a sense of a darker area under the tree and shade by the much darker greens and browns used in that area, and then suddenly feel the sun’s embrace over the town and lake as the colors lighten up giving way to the idea that this was painted on sunny day.  In van Gogh’s painting you can see a strong use of line and color, which was something common in post-impressionism.  Also when you look at the lines you can see that he used the paint almost like a pencil, very quickly and passionately.  In this piece he uses scaling amazingly, by painting the town very tiny underneath the star illuminated sky, giving us the sense that there are more powerful forces in this world than just humans.  He does that by painting the town a lot smaller than the sky and by using different designs and patterns along with the stars to give a spiritual feel, along with the church and tree reaching straight into the sky to directs us to what he feels is important in this painting.  These two pieces are remarkable examples of both periods of art.