The Realism of Gustave Courbet and his followers had barely begun one trend in realism when Impressionism led off in a different direction entirely. Édouard Manetshifted modern painting into a new phase becoming the point of departure from Realism to Impressionism. Each work became represenataive of the artists private world, the Realist artists discovered that the external reality they strived for was really determined by their own unescapable subjectivity.
*Special luminance was achieved by using new colors like viridian green and cobalt violet (both invented in 1859) and cerulean blue (invented in 1859). The pigments, applied with newly available flat-bound brushes, often were placed on canvases covered with a base of white pigment (white ground), instead of the green or brown tones preferred by earlier artisits.
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John Constable (1776-1837)
Gustave Courbet(1819-1877)
* A Burial at Ornans
Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
* Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
* Rouen Cathedral
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
* Le Moulin de la Galette
Edgar Degas (1843-1917)
* L'absinth
Mary Cassatt (1845-1926)
Selected References
De La Croix, Horst, Richard D. Tansey, and Diane Kirkpatrick.
Art Through the Ages. University of Michigan: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
1991.
Impressionism :
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/impressionism/