Global Impressionism

In 1874, a group of French artists organized the first exhibition of sketch-like avant-garde paintings at a private gallery in Paris. Critics gave them the unflattering label “Impressionist” because of their sketchlike works, but the artists embraced the terms and exhibited under this name for another seven shows. Their use of  broken strokes of often pure color, is often seen as typically French but in fact became a global phenomenon. This gallery celebrates this long-lasting movement and its impact, all the way to Portland. Impressionists focused on what their champion, the influential critic Charles Baudelaire, identified as modern life, and painted scenes of the harbor and coast, industry, city life, and nature.They embraced the workings of a bustling modern city as well as the rural landscape, alert to the patterns or forms of constant change they could capture with their brushes.