Monet's Impress Works Inspired by Air Pollution, Industrial Rev London, Paris Fog & Soot, Turner
Last edited Thu Mar 23, 2023, 10:41 AM - Edit history (1)
- A recent study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) claims to have proven a theory that air pollution inspired the painter Claude Monet to create the hazy, ethereal paintings that sparked the Impressionist movement, according to CNN report. Artnews, March 21, 2022. Ed.
The study focuses on Monet & the British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whom were active during the Industrial Revolution, which saw steam engines & coal-powered manufacturing plants emit unprecedented amounts of smoke & soot into the air. Researchers studied over 100 paintings by Turner & Monet trying to find empirical evidence that the dreamlike haze that has become a hallmark of Impressionist painting was in fact the artists interpretation of the polluted skies of London & Paris, the cities that both Turner & Monet found most inspiring.
“I work on air pollution and while seeing Turner, Whistler & Monet paintings at Tate in London and Musée d’Orsay in Paris, I noticed stylistic transformations in their works,” Anna Lea Albright, a postdoctoral researcher at Sorbonne University in Paris & coauthor of the study told CNN. “The contours of their paintings became hazier, the palette appeared wider, and the style changed from more figurative to more impressionistic: Those changes accord with physical expectations of how air pollution influences light.” Albright says air pollution “makes objects appear hazier,” blurs their edges, and because pollution “reflects visible light of all wavelengths,” makes a scene appear whiter.
The researchers studied both the hardness of edges and the amount of white in the paintings and compared them those metrics with estimates of air pollution at the time the paintings were executed, between 1796 and 1901.
“We found that there was a surprisingly good match,” Albright told CNN. The study points out that there is a correlation that goes “beyond artistic evolution & style” because the paintings reflect the differences in the amount of air pollution in London & Paris, which were industrialized at different times. Further proof comes from Monet himself, who in 1901 wrote to his wife, bemoaning a day of bad weather and a lack of the smoke, trains, & boats that “excite the inspiration a little.” “Turner & Monet are both artists who had to go to places to see certain conditions,” Jonathan Ribner, a professor of European art at Boston University, told CNN.
Ribner described a phenomenon he calls “fog tourism” that brought French painters like Monet to London “deliberately to see the fog, because they loved the atmospheric effects.” Ribner was one of the first art histories to theorize that air pollution was an influence on both Monet & Turner. Despite the evidence, there are some who refuse to believe that the birth of Impressionism can be pegged to ash & soot filling the skies. In the Washington Post, art critic Sebastian Smee railed against the study’s premise that pollution & not creativity explained the two artists’s “stylistic evolution.”...https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/monets-work-was-inspired-by-air-pollution-new-study-claims-1234661705/
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- Air Pollution, Impressionism: Monet, Turner, Wash. Post, Jan., 2023,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/31/air-pollution-impressionism-monet-turner/
- Oscar-Claude Monet (14 Nov. 1840 – 5 Dec. 1926) was a French painter & founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long career, he was the most consistent & prolific practitioner of impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 (the 'exhibition of rejects') initiated by Monet & his associates as an alternative to the Salon...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet
- 'Turner's Rain, Steam & Speed,' The Great Western Railway, painted in 1844. The National Gallery, London, Talk.
- Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775 – 19 Dec. 1851), known in his time as William Turner,[a] was an English Romantic painter, printmaker & watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, & 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, & is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Romanticism.
Turner was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, to a modest lower-middle-class family & retained his working class accent & assiduously avoiding the trappings of success & fame. A child prodigy, Turner studied at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1789, enrolling when he was 14, & exhibited his first work there at 15. During this period, he also served as an architectural draftsman. He earned a steady income from commissions & sales, which due to his troubled, contrary nature, were often begrudgingly accepted. He opened his own gallery in 1804 & became professor of perspective at the academy in 1807, where he lectured until 1828. He travelled around Europe from 1802, typically returning with voluminous sketchbooks. Intensely private, eccentric & reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner
