PIERRE BONNARD

 

Pierre Bonnard was born October 3, 1867 at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, into the family of a high-ranking official in the French War Ministry. After an idyllic and happy childhood, in 1886, Pierre entered the University of Paris to study law.
In 1887, he also enrolled for evening classes at the Académie Julian, a liberal Parisian art school, where he made friends with Paul Serusier, Mauris Denis, Henri Ibels and Paul Ranson. The five friends formed a society known as Nabiim or the Nabis after the Hebrew for 'prophets'.  


Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with small brushmarks and close values. His often complex compositions—typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family members—are both narrative and autobiographical. His wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several self-portraits, landscapes, and many still lifes which usually depict flowers and fruit. 

 Pierre Bonnard. Self-Portrait.1889


*http://www.abcgallery.com/B/bonnard/bonnardbio.html
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bonnard

LES NABIS

Les Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist artists and illustrators in Paris who became very influential in the field of graphic art. Nabi means prophet in Hebrew an Arabic. They also had close ties to the Symbolist painters. Led by Paul Seriusier, the Nabis group of painters were dedicated to following the example of Paul Gaughin in his painting and color techniques.
They were using oils on both canvas and cardboard, distemper on canvas and wall decoration, and also produced posters, prints, book illustration, textiles and furniture. Their inspiration to paint comes from symbolist features  and also impressionist painters. Much of Nabis art has a painterly, non-realistic look, with color palettes often reminding one of Cezanne and Gauguin. 

Les Nabis regarded themselves as initiates, and used a private vocabulary. They called a studio ergasterium, and ended their letters with the initials E.T.P.M.V. et M.P., meaning "En ta paume, mon verbe et ma pensée" ("In the palm of your hand, my word and my thoughts.") 

 Paul Sérusier: The Bois d'Amour à Pont-Aven: The Talisman (Le Talisman), 1888
 Maurice Denis, Tâches de soleil sur la terrasse, 1890









*http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/les-nabis.html
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nabis
*Taylor,J. Russel, "The Art Nouveau", 1967,MIT Press

GUSTAVE MOREAU

Moreau was born in Paris in 1826. His father was an architect and realised his talent.Moreau initially studied under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot and became a friend of Théodore Chassériau, whose work strongly influenced his own. He was influnced by Chasseriau's Romanticism but then he developed another style that he painted mystically intense images evoking long-dead civilizations and mythologies. Consequently he became one of the most important symbolist painters.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. 

 He became a professor  at Paris' École des Beaux-Arts in 1891 and inspired other students. Moreau died in Paris and was buried there in the Cimetière de Montmartre.


 
Pieta(1852)                                            Head of Orpheus(1865)               Hesiod and the Muse

*http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/moreau/
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau

SYMBOLISM

Symbolism is an art movement that began in 1885. This was both a continuation of the Romantic tradition and a reaction to the realistic approach of impressionism. The symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the familiar emblems or icons but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the contemporary Art Nouveaustyle and Les Nabis. Symbolists believe that art should express the truth which can only be accessed indirectly in a symbolic way.
 Edvard Munch The Scream (1893)





*http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/symbolism.htm
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)
*http://www.arthistoryguide.com/symbolism.aspx

PAUL SIGNAC

Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. Firstly he was studyiing architecture but then he started painting. He met Claude Monet and George Seurat in 1884 after that he abandoned the classic impressionist painting style and stroke into Pointillism.In 1886 Signac met Vincent van Gogh in Paris. In 1887 the two artists regularly went to Asnières-sur-Seine together, where they painted such subjects as river landscapes and cafés. Initially, Van Gogh chiefly admired Signac’s loose painting technique. After Seurat died in 1891, Paul Signac became the chief spokesman of the Neo-Impressionist movement, supported by the critic Félix Fénéon. He loved to use French coat and water in his paintings. He experimented various painting styles, been a leader to the Neo-impressionist art movement. and also he couraged new artists.


 The Port of Saint-Tropez, oil on canvas, 1901



*http://www.paul-signac.com/
**Şenyapılı, Önder, Resimde İzlenimcilik Yılları ve İzlenimci Ressamlar,ODTÜ Yayıncılık,2011

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

Neo-Impressionism is a movement that painters usually use dots to create color transfers and mixtures and it is found by George Seurat in 1886.  A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris.
 

He studied then-current color theory publications produced by Charles Blanc, Michel Eugène Chevreul and Odgen Rood, and formulated a precise application of painted dots. Art critic Feliz Feneon described this way of painting in his review of the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition in La Vogue in June 1886. The most famous artist's of these movement are :

• Georges Seurat
• Paul Signac
• Camille Pissarro
• Jan Toorop
• Maximilen Luce
• Anna Boch
• Henry Edmond Cross
• George Lemmen
• Théo van Rysselberghe
• Albert Dubois-Pillet

 Anna Boch  Falaise - Côte de Bretagne


 Paul Signac Portrait of Félix Fénéon, 1890



*Şenyapılı, Önder, Resimde İzlenimcilik Yılları ve İzlenimci Ressamlar,ODTÜ Yayıncılık,2011
*http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/Neo-Impressionism-Art-History-101-Basics.htm

OSCAR-CLAUDE MONET

Oscar-Claude Monet was born on November 14,1840 in Paris. He spent his childhood in Le Havre. At those years Eugene Boudin tought him to oil paint outside.  His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer. In 1859 Monet moved to Paris, where he attended the Académie Suisse beginning in 1860. Instead of copying the old paintings in Louvre Museum he would like to paint the view outside the window.Begining in 1860 he attended the Académie Suisse.  Despite some success in 1865, when two of his works were exhibited at the Salon, by 1867 financial difficulties forced Monet to return to his family in Le Havre.n 1872 (or 1873), he painted Impression, Sunrise (Impression: soleil levant) depicting a Le Havre landscape. It hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and is now displayed in the Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris.The work caused a sensation, and gave a name to the movement, when the critic Louis Leroy named the group as “impressionists,” a term the artists themselves soon adopted without satirical inflection.

IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism is a art movement that firstly started in Paris in 19th century. At those times there was a Académie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) The Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris. The juries were looking for traditional standarts in paintings.  In 1863, the jury rejected Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) because there was a nude woman with two dressed men.

Just like Manet there were other  innovative artist's paintings that did not accepted for exhibitions. Because of that, the artists that had been rejected, decided to create a new Saloon called: Boulevard des Capucines. This Saloon brought a new vision to the people in France in 19th century and got more attention than the actual Saloon. The impressionist artistic style had its formal launching in 1874, when a group of Parisian artists from the Cooperative and Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptures and Engravers mounted an exhibit at the studio of photographer/journalist Felix Nadar. The name of Impressionism came from Claude Monet's painting called; Impression Sunrise(1874).

A writer Lois Leroy -that was writing about art- made up a name-Impressionists- for artists that had been painting "wierd" like this to humiliate.  They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary—in order to achieve the effect of intense colour vibration.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
*Şenyapılı, Önder, Resimde İzlenimcilik Yılları ve İzlenimci Ressamlar,ODTÜ Yayıncılık,2011
*H. Rubin, James,Impressionism and the Modern Landscape, University of California Press,2008