Monet believed in painting what was he saw. He once said, 'I wish that I had been born blind and then suddenly regained my sight so that I could begin to paint without knowing what the objects are that I see before me.' He would then have had no emotional or intellectual reaction to things, and would not connect the visual any other sense.
The invention of the camera was in general use in the 1850s, and that greatly influenced Impressionist ideas. The impersonal image resulting solely from registration of light, informally in composition, and above all, the ability to seize a moment in time; each of these qualities seem to be aimed at in the Impressionist technique---direct observation of light, rejection of composition, and a swift execution which aims to capture the sensation of movement as spontaneously as any any manual technique can. Light and colour became the real subjects of Impressionists painting, and the artist's involvement with these elements corresponds very closely with 19th century ideas about their scientific nature.
It was believed that light consists of waves travelling through a substance called 'ether' which filled the whole of space. The effect of the Impressionist technique is to give the light a peculiar vibrating quality and the actual texture of the paint seems to suggest that most tangible material thing in the painting is the light-filled space itself. Their endeavours to render as accurately as possible the visual experience of colour and light led the Impressionists to observe colour in nature more accurately than any painters in the past had ever done. Their observation correlated with current scientific theory. They discovered the phenomenon of simultaneous contrasts, which had already been expounded by the French chemist, Chevreul; that is to say that areas round or next to a strong primary colour will tend to take on a tint of that colour's complementary hue, especially noticeable if the adjacent surface is grey or restrained in colour. For example, a strong area of orange will create a contrasting bluish tint in surrounding surfaces.
Their technique went even further in its relation to scientific theory. It had been established by Newton that white light consists of a combination of all the colours, as can be proved by passing a beam of white light through a prism. The different wavelengths of light are refracted at different angles, giving us the spectrum effect of a rainbow. The Impressionists by applying their colour in small, broken strokes of blue and yellow seen together appear as green, approximated to the nature of light itself.
The Impressionist concern with colour and light accounted to a great extent for their use of subject.They chose only scenes where these elements were prominent -- sunlit streets or landscapes, often with water and the added light reflection it gives; outdoor scenes in which colour predominates -- flower gardens, regattas, open-air restaurants, dances and fetes. Rarely did they attempt indoor scenes or winter landscapes, with the notable exception of Monet's snow scenes in which the quality of light reflected upwards from the ground is particularly arresting.
The Impressionists (notably Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir and Morisot, with marginal contributions by Boudin, Manet and Degas) were close enough to give them cohesion and force of a revolutionary movement. This culminated in the first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1874. Its great achievemment, in the face of strong public opposition, was to shatter for ever the preconceived notions of academic art, and, through the liberation of colour, to establish a springboard for the modern movement.
However after the 1870s painters went their own ways. They had abandoned the object of light and colour, and lost touch with the structure of reality -- contour, volume and space. With theory overriding concern with sensation, they had withdrawn from intellectual or emotional involvement in nature.
Renoir had visited Italy and rediscovered the elements of form which had made the which had made the Renassiance great.
Monet, took a different direction. He carried light beyond the merely senual to a point where it became the theme of an emotional and mystical vision, akin to music and almost abstract in form. With progessively failing sight, he spent the latter part of his life painting his lily pond at Givency. These paintings, veils of colour and light, have had a strong influence on more recent abstract artists.
