Impressionism ― A Centenary Exhibition

The goal of this exhibition and its catalogue is neither to assemble a group of works painted in 1874 nor to mount a retrospective of the Impressionist movement. The collections of the Galerie du Jeu de Paume (Musée du Louvre) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art already offer the finest and most complete survey of Impressionism. Our purpose instead is to bring together the most significant and distinguished Impressionist pictures executed during the difficult early years of the movement, which lasted from approximately 1860 until the appearance of Neo-Impressionsim with Seurat in the mid-eighties.

Impressionism cannot be given a capsule definition limited to its preoccupation with modern life, Japanese art, and plein-air painting. Before anything else, its emphasis on resonant color (vibration colorise) rendered through adjacent strokes of color interactivating one another is its most important characteristic. The common interest in resonant color is the source of real innovataion in the work of Monet, Renoir, and their circle, and in some instances, Manet too. Impressionism is the convergence of loose bonds between these individuals, each with his own obsessions but working together in a common venture without the loss of his own particular character; nevertheless, Impressionism was also a collective intellect (although as individuals they only thought of one thing at a time, life itself is a culmination—it is everything simultaneously). The Impressionists, because of their particular mode of plastic expressions, embodied the spirit of the period. [This book was originally published in 1974 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]