The Historical Development Of The Impressionist And Aesthetic Characteristics

Impressionism painting was an artistic trend of thought prevailing in Europe from the late half of 19^th century to the early 20^th century. In the first impressionists' exhibition, Monet's Sunrise-Impression became a turning point from which impressionism came to be known as a genre of art. Hereafter, impressionism came upon the stage of French painting in a form of innovation, which was opposed to classicism and romanticism. Impressionists advocated that painters should go out of their drawing rooms and work on the painting according to their feeling and observation of their eyes in the sun so as to express the subtle changes of colors of the objects irradiated in the sun. That created a new realm of painting. In the development of world painting, impressionism is of innovative significance. It inaugurated a new field of painting both in content and form and provided new techniques to display the objective world and human subjective world. Meanwhile, it also made it more possible for artists to exert their artistic individuality and extended the range of art appreciation. Impressionism paved the way for the appearance of modernism in the 20^th century. In more than 200 years, the artistic views of impressionism have influenced the new artists generation after generation. The different schools of painting in different periods of time have been more or less marked by the esthetic views of impressionism. In the field of theoretic study of impressionism, a great number of historians have given their unique expression of impressionism from different angles.The thesis aims to renew the elucidation of impressionism on the basis of the academic study of scholars and experts in the history of fine arts, to correctly expound the historic evolvement of impressionism and its aesthetic characteristics by tracking the social background of impressionism appearance, its exhibitions, artists and their works and its influence on modern fine arts, following the three stages of impressionism evolvement, namely, impressionism, neo-impressionism and post-impressionism. Besides, it endeavors to explain the connecting function of impressionism in the history of fine arts from a different angle so as to obtain any academic significance.The thesis explores the aesthetic characteristics of impressionism from three points: first, in the first stage of impressionism, in terms of the pictures and inward nature that the artists tried to express, the content of its paintings focuses on true life; secondly, in the stage of neo-impressionism, the artistic drawing techniques concentrates on representation, due to the effect of the development of science and technology; thirdly, in the stage of post-impressionism, form outweighs content as a result of replacement of effect of science and technology by the expression of artists' feelings. The three aesthetic characteristics are proved by the arguments collected from the historic development and expressive features of impressionism.