Online Art Appreciation Course: Impressionism and the Painting of Parisian Modernity

From 10 January to 7 March, we journeyed back in time to nineteenth-century Paris with Dr Sinéad Furlong-Clancy and explored the art of the French Impressionists, who depicted their changing city and its surrounding countryside in new — and sometimes startling — ways for contemporary viewers and critics. Impressionist artworks are now amongst the most prized and beloved of museum and private collections, while in their time they heralded a rupture not only in painting technique but in the way people looked at, exhibited, and collected art.

During the course we discussed the ways in which these innovative young artists sought to paint what they saw — with modern life as a privileged subject, often depicting family and friends, through techniques of capturing fleeting sensations of light and atmospheric conditions, the ‘impression’ of a moment, the use of colour and loose brushwork not bound by rigid aesthetic principles nor convention — rather than what the Academy wanted to see (and to show) on the walls of its annual Salon. We considered the origins, development, and legacy of Impressionism; the strictures of nineteenth-century academic training and the Paris Salon; the development of plein-air and landscape painting; the figure and fashion in art; and the themes of work and leisure; entertainment and spectacle; movement and modernity; and the city as backdrop, playground, structure and emblem of Impressionist art. We met the leading artists of Parisian modernity & Impressionism: Manet, the forerunner of the Impressionists; Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Degas, Cassatt, Pissarro, Sisley, and Caillebotte, amongst others, and considered the ways in which their independent group exhibitions (1874—1886) and individual and unique contributions to art history have characterised the way in which we imagine this period today, through not only their art but via its ubiquitous reproduction in popular culture. The course explored Impressionist art from the National Gallery of Ireland’s collections and from museum collections around the world.

About the tutor: 

Dr Sinéad Furlong-Clancy is an art and fashion historian and specialist in nineteenth-century Parisian modernity, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. She is a specialist lecturer for the National Gallery of Ireland and the Hugh Lane Gallery, and previously lectured at Trinity College Dublin, the National College of Art and Design and the Sorbonne, Paris. She held doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships at Trinity College Dublin, and studied art history at the Sorbonne, the École Normale Supérieure, the University of Provence at Aix-en-Provence, and the École du Louvre, following a curatorial and conservation programme. She interned in the Impressionist and Modern Art department of Sotheby’s Paris, and has been a contributing art historian for several acclaimed arts features series on RTÉ Radio 1.

Her research focuses on art, fashion, the female body, gender, and public / private space, particularly the public park space, in nineteenth-century Paris. She is currently working on a new version of her first book, developed from her doctoral thesis, ‘Women in the Parks of Paris: Painting and Writing the Female Body, 1848-1900,’ and a second book on Impressionist Berthe Morisot. Her most recently published essay, ‘Impressionist Interiors and Modern Womanhood: The representation of domestic space in the art of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt,’ for an edited collection on the domestic interior, was published by Bloomsbury, New York in 2022.

Course Outline:

Week 1 Introduction: Impressionism and Parisian Modernity

This introductory lecture looks at the context for the emergence of Impressionism in Paris in the late 1860s and 1870s and the ways in which contemporary artists moving beyond their studies sought to represent modern life in new ways, at times adapting past aesthetic precedents and at others striking out afresh. We will think about key definitions and concepts (modernity, Impressionism, academic painting, the Paris Salon), and the changing nature of representation and art, both in terms of practice and exhibiting works, at this time. Contemporary critical responses are also considered throughout the course.

Key artists discussed throughout the course: Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte, amongst others. Post-Impressionist artists Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh, also feature.

 

Week 2: Painting the City

This lecture explores the ways in which Manet and the Impressionists represented their rapidly changing city, against the context of the re-urbanisation of Paris during the Second Empire (1852—70) under Napoleon III and Haussmann. We will look at paintings of streets, boulevards, parks and gardens, bridges, railway stations, and views of the city from apartment balconies and windows; scenes in which architecture, engineering and the urban landscape combine in new images of modern Paris. Impressionist painting techniques and their relation to the painting of modernity and contemporary critical responses will be discussed throughout the course.

 

Week 3: Urban Leisure and Escape to the Country

This week we explore the ways in which the new Parisian urban landscape provided spaces for modern leisure and socialising outdoors — en plein air. Access to the surrounding countryside, its woods and riverbanks, and further afield, the coastline of Normandy and Brittany, gave contemporary Parisian artists the opportunity to depict modern leisure activities, now widely associated with Impressionism, such as boating, lunching outdoors, and walking in the country with family and friends on sunny summer days. Impressionist techniques which focused on capturing changing light effects, atmospheric conditions, and the seasons, as reflected in contemporary landscapes, will also be discussed.

 

Week 4: Impressionist Interiors

This week’s lecture moves indoors and explores the interiors which feature frequently in Impressionist art. Although primarily considered an art of the outdoors, Impressionist artists widely depicted their homes, and other interior spaces such as theatres, the Opera, cafés, rehearsal rooms, studios: spaces in which contemporary artists represented modern life, and in which work and leisure overlapped. The first part of the session will focus on the domestic interior and highlight in particular the work of Morisot and Cassatt. In the second part of the session, we are delighted to welcome guest speaker Janet McLean, Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Ireland, to discuss the exhibition she curated on this theme, ‘Impressionist Interiors,’ at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2008.

 

Week 5: Spectacle and Entertainment

The spaces of spectacle and entertainment, and socialising, of late-nineteenth-century Paris characterise Impressionist art as much as scenes of outdoor leisure and sun-dappled landscapes. This lecture explores those spaces, both indoors and outdoors — the Opera, theatres, café-concerts, bars, restaurants, balls, races — whether we are looking at the main stage, or event, or those glimpses of ‘other’ spaces, in the wings and rehearsal rooms for Degas’s ballet dancers; or looking at the audience or the spectators at the races; and the way in which the contemporary Parisian architecture and landscape of spectacle and entertainment overlapped with contemporary socialising spaces of Parisian modernity.

 

Week 6: Fashion and the Figure

In depicting their families, friends, and models in their painting of modern life, Manet and the Impressionists represented contemporary fashion and the figure in new ways. This lecture explores the representation of the modern figure, of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity,’ and the details of fashion which make their art particularly of its time. We will explore key paintings and recent technical examinations of major works that have led to a new understanding of the significance of fashion in Impressionist art, with implications for the interpretation of paintings in particular.

 

Week 7 Exhibitions, Collectors, and the Art Market

This lecture explores the role of the independent Impressionist exhibitions (1874–1886) and the growing role of gallerists and dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel in the careers of the Impressionists, including the development of particular aspects of late Impressionism such as the series of works on the same theme under different atmospheric conditions, such as Monet’s Haystacks, Poplars, and eventually his Water Lilies. We will also consider the impact of major collectors such as Hugh Lane and the Havemeyers in the development of public museum collections, through their generous bequests of Impressionist art. We are delighted to welcome guest speaker Christopher Riopelle, The Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings, National Gallery London, in the second part of the session, to discuss Paul Durand-Ruel in the context of the exhibition ‘Inventing Impressionism,’ which he co-curated for the National Gallery London, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, in 2014-15.

 

Week 8 Legacy and New Directions: Late impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Beyond

The concluding lecture of the course looks at the legacy of Impressionism, taking as starting point the final independent Impressionist exhibition of 1886, which included the presence of newcomer Georges Seurat with his monumental A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884. We will consider late Impressionism, the emergence of Post-Impressionism, and new directions in late nineteenth-century French art and beyond.

Text © Sinéad Furlong-Clancy, 2022.

 

Other courses in the series:

• Spring 2023: Great Women Artists from the Renaissance to Romanticism
• Autumn 2023: On the Move: The Journeys of Artists and Artworks, 1650-1950.