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Is Easel Painting Dead?
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Is Easel Painting Dead? The traditional idea of an artist standing at an easel is probably not a reality today. All the skills that have been acquired over hundreds of years are now being lost. Painting no longer has the force it once had. 500 years ago, people couldn’t read. Artists at that time were very important people. People had to look at their paintings to find out about things, this time was called the renaissance. Impressionism Impressionists were a break from tradition. They were the first artists to use bright colours. This is because they took their canvases outside. When you work out of doors, you have to work quite quickly to catch sunsets e.t.c. For the people in those days, the pictures looked unfinished and messy, so when they tried to exhibit their pictures in all the official galleries, the academy refused. So in 1874 they organised their own exhibition in a photographers studio and it was nicknamed by a journalist, that they weren’t really paintings, just impressions. They didn’t paint what people thought were suitable subjects. As well as the usual slapdash paintings, the critics didn’t like the things that they painted e.g. railway stations, people in cafes, ordinary people doing ordinary things. The impressionists reflected the political thinking of the time; they started to pay attention to the ordinary people and not just the rich. The impressionists said, “We want to paint modern life in a modern way.” They used, what was then, the modern discovery of photography. It helped them paint things that only lasted for a short time. They were also influenced by newly discovered work by Japanese artists. One of the most important impressionists was Claude Monet. He was born in 1840 and died in 1926. The most important part about him was that he decided to work exclusively in front of his subject. He loved all the different colour effects he saw in nature, he wanted to paint the pretty pictures. One of the most helpful things was the invention of paints in tubes. He was brought up in a town called Le Havec on the West Coast of France. The local artist at the time was a man called Boudon. Monet knew him and Boudon was encouraging him to paint outside because the paintings done outside were more lively and fresher. When he was 19/20, he decided to move to Paris. When he went to Paris he was taught in the Academy Swiss by an artist called Charles Gleyre. He taught them the traditional style of painting, but he also encouraged his students to paint outdoors in the woods around Paris. They took advantage of the new transport systems, went into the country, and painted people swimming e.t.c.
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