~LES NABIS~

My brief summary of Les Nabis: Nabis is a group of artists in Paris in the 1890s; their outlook was essentially symbolist and they were influenced by Gaugin's expressive use of colour and ryhtmic pattern.

Nabis. A group of painters, mainly French, active in Paris in the 1890s; their outlook was essentially Symbolist and they were particularly influenced by Gauguin's expressive use of colour and rhythmic pattern. The name Nabis (Hebrew for ‘prophets') was coined in reference to the missionary zeal with which the members promoted Gauguin's teachings. Paul Sérusier, who met Gauguin at Pont-Aven in 1888, was the driving force behind the group and with Maurice Denis was its main theorist. Other members included Bonnard, Maillol (before he turned to sculpture), Ranson (see ACADÉMIE), Roussel, Vuillard, the Hungarian Josef Rippl-Rónai (1861–1927), the Swiss Vallotton, and the Dutchman Jan Verkade (1868–1946). They were active in design (of posters, stained glass, and theatrical decor) and book illustration as well as painting. Group exhibitions were held between 1892 and 1899, after which the members gradually drifted apart. Several of them, however, continued Nabis ideas into the 20th century, notably Denis and Sérusier, whose work remained esoteric in spirit and bound up with their religious beliefs. (Verkade was even more devout, entering a Benedictine monastery in Germany in 1894 and being ordained in 1902, after which he was known as Dom Willibrod Verkade; he continued to paint fairly regularly up to the First World War.) Bonnard and Vuillard departed radically from Nabis ideas in the quiet Intimiste scenes for which they became chiefly famous, but their later decorative work sometimes retained a feeling for flat pattern that recalls their Nabis days.

IAN CHILVERS. "Nabis." A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. 1999. Retrieved June 06, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O5-Nabis.html

Paul Sérusier

Paul Sérusier (9 November 1864 – 7 October 1927) was a French painter who was a pioneer of abstract art and an inspiration for the avant-garde Nabi movement, Synthetism and Cloisonnism.

~SYMBOLISM~

My brief summary of symbolism: The symbolism movement started in 1880s against the naturalistic aims of impressionism. Symbolist painters tried to give visual expression to emotional experiences. Religious feeling of an intense, mystical kind was a feature of the movement, but so was an interest in the erotic and the perverse—death, disease, and sin were favourite subjects. Stylistically, Symbolist artists varied greatly, from a love of exotic detail to an almost primitive simplicity in the conception of the subject, and from firm outlines to misty softness in the delineation of form. A general tendency, however, was towards flattened forms and broad areas of colour.

Symbolism. A loosely organized movement in literature and the visual arts, flourishing c.1885–c.1910, characterized by a rejection of direct, literal representation in favour of evocation and suggestion. It was part of a broad anti-materialist and anti-rationalist trend in ideas and art towards the end of the 19th century and specifically marked a reaction against the naturalistic aims of Impressionism. Symbolist painters tried to give visual expression to emotional experiences, or as the poet Jean Moréas put it in a Symbolist Manifesto published in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, ‘to clothe the idea in sensuous form’. Just as Symbolist poets thought there was a close correspondence between the sound and rhythm of words and their meaning, so Symbolist painters thought that colour and line in themselves could express ideas or feelings. Symbolist critics were much given to drawing parallels between the arts, and Redon's paintings, for example, were compared with the poetry of Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe and with the music of Claude Debussy. Many painters were inspired by the same kind of imagery as Symbolist writers (the femme fatale is a common theme), but Gauguin and his followers (see Synthetism) chose much less flamboyant subjects, often peasant scenes. Religious feeling of an intense, mystical kind was a feature of the movement, but so was an interest in the erotic and the perverse—death, disease, and sin were favourite subjects. Stylistically, Symbolist artists varied greatly, from a love of exotic detail to an almost primitive simplicity in the conception of the subject, and from firm outlines to misty softness in the delineation of form. A general tendency, however, was towards flattened forms and broad areas of colour—in tune with Post-Impressionism in general. By freeing painting from what Gauguin called ‘the shackles of probability’ the movement helped to create the aesthetic premisses of much 20th-century art. Although chiefly associated with France, Symbolism had international currency, and such diverse artists as Burne-Jones, Hodler, and Munch are regarded as part of the movement in its broadest sense. Symbolist sculptors include the Norwegian Gustav Vigeland and the Belgian Georg Minne (1866–1941).

IAN CHILVERS. "Symbolism." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Retrieved June 06, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O2-Symbolism.html

Fernand Khnopff
Birth name	Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff
Born	12 September 1858 Grembergen, Belgium
Died	12 November 1921 (aged 63) Brussels, Belgium
Nationality	Belgian
Field	Painter, Sculptor, Designer
Training	Xavier Mellery Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts, Brussels Académie Julian, Paris
Movement	Symbolism
Works	Des Caresses
Awards	Commander in the Order of Leopold Officer of the Légion d'Honneur

 Fernand Khnopff: (12 September 1858 – 12 November 1921) was a Belgian symbolist painter. In 1881, he presents his works to the public for the first time at the "Salon de l'Essor" in Brussels. The critics' appraisal of his work is very harsh, with the exception of Emile Verhaeren who writes a commending review. Verhaeren would remain a lifelong supporter and would write the first monography of the painter. In 1883, he was one of the founding members of the group Le Groupe des XX. Khnopff exhibited regularly at the annual "Salon" organised by Les XX.

~NEO-IMPRESSIONISM~

My brief summary of neo-impressionism: Neo-impressionism movement started in 1886. The theoretical basis of Neo-Impressionism was divisionism, with its associated technique of pointillism—the use of dots of pure colour applied in such a way that when seen from an appropriate distance they achieve a maximum of luminosity. In each painting the dots were of a uniform size, chosen to harmonize with the scale of the work.

Neo-Impressionism. A movement in French painting—both a development from Impressionism and a reaction against it—in which the Impressionist approach to depicting light and colour was made more rational and scientific. Georges Seurat was the founder of the movement and far and away its outstanding artist. His friend Paul Signac was its main theoretician, and Camille Pissarro was briefly a leading adherent. All three showed Neo-Impressionist pictures at the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 (the term Neo-Impressionism was coined by the critic Félix Fénéon (1861–1944) in a review of this exhibition). The theoretical basis of Neo-Impressionism was divisionism, with its associated technique of pointillism—the use of dots of pure colour applied in such a way that when seen from an appropriate distance they achieve a maximum of luminosity. In each painting the dots were of a uniform size, chosen to harmonize with the scale of the work. In Seurat's paintings, this approach combined solidity and clarity of form with a vibrating intensity of light; in the hands of lesser artists, it often produced works that look rigid and contrived. As an organized movement Neo-Impressionism was short-lived, but it had a significant influence on several major artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably Gauguin, van Gogh, and also Matisse, who worked with Signac and another Neo-Impressionist, Henri-Edmond Cross (1856–1910), at Saint Tropez in 1906.

IAN CHILVERS. "Neo-Impressionism." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Retrieved June 05, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O2-NeoImpressionism.html

Georges Pierre Seurat
Georges Seurat, 1888
Born	2 December 1859 Paris, France
Died	29 March 1891 (aged 31) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Field	Painting
Movement	Post-Impressionism, Neo-impressionism, Pointillism, modern art
Works	Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

 Georges Pierre Seurat: (2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism. It is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.

~IMPRESSIONISM~

My brief summary of impressionism: Impressionism movement started in the 1860s and affected almost every art, especially painting and music, in Europe, USA and Australia. Impressionists were united in rebelling against academic conventions to try to depict their surroundings with spontaneity and freshness, capturing an ‘impression’ of what the eye sees at a particular moment, rather than a detailed record of appearances. Impressionists reached their aims by reflecting the visual impressions of light and colors

Impressionism. A movement in art, generally in painting, that originated in France in the 1860s and had an enormous impact on Western art over the following half-century. As an organized movement, Impressionism was purely a French phenomenon, but many of its ideas and practices were adopted in other countries, and by the turn of the century it was a dominant influence on avant-garde art in Europe (and also in the USA and Australia). In essence, its effect was to undermine the authority of large, formal, highly finished paintings in favour of works that more immediately expressed the artist's personality and response to the world.

The Impressionists were not a formal group with clearly defined principles and aims; rather they were a loose association of artists linked by some community of outlook who banded together for the purpose of exhibiting, most of them having had difficulty in getting their work accepted for the official Salon (they held eight group shows, all in Paris, in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, and 1886). The main figures involved were (in alphabetical order) Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley; Berthe Morisot, too, played a central role in the movement. Frédéric Bazille was part of the original nucleus but died tragically early in 1870; the minor figures included Armand Guillaumin, who was the last survivor of those who showed in the 1874 exhibition, dying in 1927. Monet, Renoir, and Sisley met as students, and the others came into contact with them through the artistic café society of Paris. There were friendly ties of varied degrees of intimacy linking each of them to most of the others, but Degas and even more Manet were set somewhat apart because they came from a higher stratum of society than the others, and the artists' commitment to Impressionism varied considerably (Manet was much respected as a senior figure, but he never exhibited with the group). They were united, however, in rebelling against academic conventions to try to depict their surroundings with spontaneity and freshness, capturing an ‘impression’ of what the eye sees at a particular moment, rather than a detailed record of appearances. Their archetypal subject was landscape (and painting out of doors, directly from nature, was one of the key characteristics of the movement), but they treated many other subjects, notably ones involving everyday city life. Degas, for example, made subjects such as horse races, dancers, and laundresses his own, and Renoir is famous for his pictures of pretty women and children.

In trying to capture the effects of light on varied surfaces, particularly in open-air settings, the Impressionists transformed painting, using bright colours and sketchy brushwork that seemed bewildering or shocking to traditionalists. The name ‘Impressionism’, in fact, was coined derisively, when the painter and critic Louis Leroy (1812–85) latched onto a picture by Monet, Impression: Sunrise (1872, Mus. Marmottan, Paris), at the group's first exhibition, heading his abusive review ‘Exposition des Impressionistes’ (Le Charivari, 25 Apr. 1874); he dismissed the group as a whole as ‘hostile to good manners, to devotion to form, and to respect for the masters’. Although the critical response to the Impressionists was not as one-sided as is sometimes suggested, Leroy's attitude prevailed in conservative circles for many years; for example, when Gustave Caillebotte left his superb Impressionist collection to the French nation in 1894, Jean-Léon Gérôme wrote that ‘For the Government to accept such filth, there would have to be a great moral slackening.’ However, by the the time of the final exhibition in 1886 the Impressionists as a whole were starting to achieve critical praise and financial success (helped by the dedicated promotion of Durand-Ruel), and during the 1890s their influence began to be widely felt (by this time the group had broken up and only Monet continued to pursue Impressionist ideals rigorously).

Few artists outside France adopted Impressionism wholesale, but many lightened their palettes and loosened their brushwork as they synthesized its ideas with their local traditions. It was perhaps in the USA that it was most eagerly adopted, both by painters such as Childe Hassam and the other members of The Ten and by collectors ( Mary Cassatt helped to develop the taste among her wealthy picture-buying friends). It also made a significant impact in Australia, with Tom Roberts playing the leading role in its introduction. In Britain, Sickert and Steer are generally regarded as the main channels through which Impressionism influenced the country's art, but the differences between their work shows how broadly and imprecisely the term has been used (at the time, D. S. MacColl commented that it was applied to ‘any new painting that surprised or annoyed the critics or public’). For a few years around 1890, Steer painted in a sparklingly fresh Impressionist manner, but his style later became more sober; Sickert adopted the broken brushwork of Impressionism (as did his followers in the Camden Town Group), but he used much more subdued colour, and he had a taste for quirky, distinctively English subject matter. In contrast, the painters of the Newlyn School often painted out of doors in conscious imitation of the French and used comparatively high-keyed colour, but they generally did not adopt Impressionist brushwork. Accordingly, many authorities think that among British artists, only Steer—and he only briefly—can be considered a ‘pure’ Impressionist.

In addition to prompting imitation and adaptation, Impressionism also inspired various counter-reactions—indeed its influence was so great that much of the history of late 19th-century and early 20th-century painting is the story of its aftermath. The Neo-Impressionists, for example, tried to give the optical principles of Impressionism a scientific basis, and the Post-Impressionists began a long series of movements that attempted to free colour and line from purely representational functions. Similarly, the Symbolists wanted to restore the emotional values that they thought the Impressionists had sacrificed through concentrating so strongly on the fleeting and the casual.

IAN CHILVERS. "Impressionism." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Retrieved June 05, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O2-Impressionism.html

Claude Monet
Claude Monet, photo by Nadar, 1899.
Birth name	Oscar-Claude Monet
Born	14 November 1840 Paris, France
Died	5 December 1926 (aged 86) Giverny , France
Nationality	French
Field	Painter
Movement	Impressionism
Works	Impression, Sunrise Rouen Cathedral series London Parliament series Water Lilies Haystacks Poplars
Patrons	Gustave Caillebotte, Ernest Hoschedé, Georges Clemenceau
Influenced by	Eugène Boudin, Johan Jongkind, Gustave Courbet

Claude Monet: (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.  The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).