Dismissing Impressionism

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Dismissing Impressionism

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Published on before 2005

A is a great example of this, in which powerful human themes are expressed using strong compositions, refined drawing and modeling but with overall impressionist paint handling.

However L'hermitte was already very popular and more successful than any of them at that time.

He declined!

If you review the published letter of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, you’ll see that Van Gogh considered L'hermitte perhaps the greatest living artist, far better than himself. But since he did not choose to join their Impressionist band, Lhermitte was mostly lost from the Modernist view of art history….even though he’s clearly the greatest of them all in his deft masterly use of Impressionist technique in capturing some of the most exquisite lighting effects ever achieved with their alla prima method.

The Modernist story vilifies all the academics, but it’s completely false, as not only were most of the artists of this period not acting in a biased way against the Impressionists, it’s also intellectually dishonest to denigrate any artists work based on whether or not they supported the tenets of any one group.

In fact, there was an explosion of new techniques and subject matter during the late 19th Century, the likes of which had never before been seen in all of art history, and there are scores of truly great artists some of whom are finally being rediscovered after a century of near oblivion.

The Impressionists were one of many groups, and in our view not the greatest at all.

Rather than trying to repeat what I’ve said before in a number of places, please read the most popular essay on ARC today, now used in countless classrooms as required reading for thousands of students each year.