Impressionism

Description

Impressionism (1872–1886, peak years) was the first movement to take painting outside the studio and treat the act of seeing — not the act of describing — as the subject. Its most reproduced examples come from artists whose commitment to the program was the most absolute — painting the same haystack, the same cathedral, the same water-lily pond dozens of times to record how light changed with weather and hour. Visually the style means: visible separate brushstrokes (no blending wet-into-wet for finish), broken color (placing complementary colors next to each other so the eye mixes them at distance), high-key palette (no black; shadows are colored — usually violet, blue, or green), outdoor subjects, and an interest in atmospheric effects — fog, rain, snow, reflection on water. Use it for landscapes, gardens, water scenes, urban exteriors at specific times of day, soft portrait backgrounds, and any image that should feel like a recorded moment of light. Limitations: not for sharp detail, not for night scenes, not for psychological interiors. Models will sometimes give you "soft brushy painting" — specify a haystack or water-lily-pond series and ask for "broken color, no black, visible separate brushstrokes" to anchor the look.