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Plein Air

Claude Monet in His Studio Boat is also noteworthy as a document of Monet's preference for painting outdoors ( en plein air )—a radical practice at the time—in order to record his "impression" of the Seine by placing colors directly on a white canvas without any preliminary sketch—also a sharp break from traditional studio techniques

Barbizon School

This Barbizon School specialized in detailed pictures of forest and countryside. The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870.

Marie Antoinette

Last queen of France before French Revolution

Impressionism

A late-19th-century art movement that sought to capture a fleeting moment, thereby conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions. It was there, around 1870, that the art movement called Impressionism was born, an aesthetic by-product of the sometimes brutal and chaotic transformation of French life, which made the world seem unstable and insubstantial.

Symbolism

A late-19th-century movement based on the idea that the artist was not an imitator of nature but a creator who transformed the facts of nature into a symbol of the inner experience of that fact.

Impasto

A layer of thickly applied pigment.

Modernism

A movement in Western art that developed in the second half of the 19th century and sought to capture the images and sensibilities of the age. Modernist art goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artist's critical examination of the premises of art itself.

Realism

A movement that emerged in mid-19th-century France. Realist artists represented the subject matter of everyday life (especially subjects that previously had been considered inappropriate for depiction) in a relatively naturalistic mode. *Check further explanation in "France"-Chp 27*

Neoclassicism

A style of art and architecture that emerged in the late 18th century as part of a general revival of interest in classical cultures. Neoclassical artists adopted themes and styles from ancient Greece and Rome.

Rococo Style

A style, primarily of interior design, that appeared in France around 1700. Rococo interiors featured lavish decoration, including small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, easel paintings, tapestries, reliefs, wall paintings, and elegant furniture. The term Rococo derived from the French word rocaille (pebble) and referred to the small stones and shells used to decorate grotto interiors.

Pointilism

A system of painting devised by the 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat. The artist separates color into its component parts and then applies the component colors to the canvas in tiny dots (points). The image becomes comprehensible only from a distance, when the viewer's eyes optically blend the pigment dots. Sometimes referred to as divisionism.

Grand Manner

A type of 18th-century portrait painting designed to communicate a person's grace and class through certain standardized conventions, such as the large scale of the figure relative to the canvas, the controlled pose, the landscape setting, and the low horizon line.

Odalisque

A woman in a Turkish harem

Napoleon Bonaparte

After serving in various French army commands and leading major campaigns in Italy and Egypt, Napoleon assumed a newly created position: first consul of the French Republic, a title with clear and intentional links to the ancient Roman Republic. In May 1804, for example, he became king of Italy. Later that year, the pope journeyed to Paris for Napoleon's coronation as emperor of the French.

Madame du Pompadour

Aristocratic woman, mistress of Louis XV, member of the French Court

Grand Tour

Custom traditional trip of Europe undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank when they had come of age. People who traveled wanted to bring back souvenirs, so artists took advantage of their desire to spend money and sold their arts as souvenirs.

Fin-de-Siecle

French, "end of the century." A period in Western cultural history from the end of the 19th century until just before World War I, when decadence and indulgence masked anxiety about an uncertain future.

Art Nouveau

French, "new art." A late-19th- and early-20th-century art movement whose proponents tried to synthesize all the arts in an effort to create art based on natural forms that could be mass produced by technologies of the industrial age. The movement had other names in other countries: Jugendstil in Austria and Germany, Modernismo in Spain, and Stile Floreale in Italy.

Fête Galante

French, gallant [outdoor] party

Louis XVI

Louis XVI (16) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine

Romanticism

Romanticism emerged from a desire for freedom—not only political freedom but also freedom of thought, feeling, action, worship, speech, and taste. Romantics asserted that freedom was the right and property of all. They believed that the path to freedom was through imagination and feeling rather than reason.

Enlightenment

The 18th-century Western philosophy based on empirical evidence. The Enlightenment was a new way of thinking critically about the world and about humankind, independently of religion, myth, or tradition.

Japonisme

The French fascination with all things Japanese. Japonisme emerged in the second half of the 19th century.

Complementary colors

Those pairs of colors, such as red and green, that together embrace the entire spectrum. The complement of one of the three primary colors is a mixture of the other two.

Expressionistic

Twentieth-century art that is the result of the artist's unique inner or personal vision and that often has an emotional dimension. Expressionism contrasts with art focused on visually describing the empirical world.

Abstract

abstract design in which line, color, value, and shape cohere in a precise and tightly controlled organization. expressive lines, shapes, pure colors.

Sublime

feelings of awe mixed with terror