The Social Conflict of the Impressionists

The long struggle of the impressionist painters for public acceptance is one of the most striking art-historical phenomena of the nineteenth century. It epitomizes the ceaseless drive of artists for recognition as well as the public resistance to innovation, both of which increased during the Industrial Revolution.From today's perspective it seems strange that the rejection of impressionist painting should have reached such intensity, since the movement produced no obviously subversive attack on society, since it generally dealt with inoffensive subject matter, and since it created pictorial compositions based upon normal daily experience. There was nothing obscure or pedantic. In fact, they seemed purposely to avoid abstruse personal symbolism, turning usually to the most commonplace subjects; landscapes, still-lifes, and everyday genre scenes. To the public the most shocking thing about impressionist painting was the way it portrayed the familiar in an arbitrary new way; arbitrary because it was not in ...