Why is Impressionism a turning point in the development of Western painting?

We know that at the beginning of the 15th century, the Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, the "Father of Oil Painting", succeeded in developing a new type of painting material based on tempera paintings by mixing colors with easy-to-dry vegetable oils, and the paintings on canvas boards and walls were called oil paintings with this material.

The successful development of oil painting brought revolutionary changes to Western painting. It coincided with the European Renaissance, when the art of painting entered a phase of unprecedented prosperity. Because the oil painting material has the advantages of stable shape, full of color and suitable for preservation and other characteristics, oil painting can be quickly popular throughout Europe and become the main type of Western painting. How to create a kind of painting technique and form of expression in line with the characteristics of the oil painting material, in order to better express and spread the main idea of humanism of the Renaissance, has become a subject that many painting artists have been diligently exploring and striving to achieve.

Italy is the birthplace and center of the European Renaissance, during which two famous schools of oil painting with wide influence were produced, one is the "Florentine School", and the other is the "Venetian School", with these two schools as the core and Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Tinto Nieto and other painting artists, represented by these two schools of painting, applied the scientific principles of focal point perspective, light and shadow, color, human anatomy, the golden section line and other scientific principles to the creative practice of oil painting, and put forward the principles of oil painting and the basic theory that drawing is the basis of oil painting, which is the principle of creating oil paintings and the basic theory that drawing is the basis of oil painting, and followed these principles and theories to create the Classical School of painting, which was the first school of painting in the world. principles and theories, and followed these principles and theories, creating an example of classical realistic oil painting.

The Mona Lisa, Genesis, Athens Academy, the beauty of the three gods, the Virgin Mary, the Sleeping Venus, the heavenly love and secular love and so on, classical realistic oil paintings just produced, that is, with its rigorous modeling of rigorous composition and realistic color full of connotation, etc., by the people's general welcome and love, and soon became the mainstream of Western oil painting art.

From the middle of the 15th century to the second half of the 19th century, for more than 400 years, realistic oil painting, represented by classicism, has been the main content and basic requirements of the Western orthodox academy-type painting education, dominating and leading the development of Western painting art. Although these centuries have produced many different styles of oil painting, such as "Baroque art", "Dutch small school", "Rococoism", "Romanticism", "realism", "neo-classicism" and so on, but all the changes are the same, the oil painting creation follow the classical "Realistic" principles and concepts, are not free and beyond the "realistic" outside, all belong to the category of realistic oil painting.

However, at the beginning of the 19th century, the invention and application of photographic technology brought a great impact to realistic oil painting, which had long been responsible for the function of image painting, and at that time, the technique and expression of realistic oil painting had reached its peak, and it was difficult to make new breakthroughs, and thus realistic oil painting fell into a period of never-experienced doldrums and dilemmas.

It is in this context, a new form of oil painting and realistic oil painting is very different from the expression of oil painting came into being. 1870s, with the French painters Monet, Manet's Sunrise - Impression and Lunch on the Grass as a symbol of the history of Western oil painting appeared in a major change, Impressionist oil painting has arisen.

The biggest difference between impressionist oil painting and classical realistic oil painting is that it breaks the traditional principles of realistic oil painting and aesthetic concepts, and no longer intentionally pursues the precise modeling of the figurative real restoration of the original appearance of objective objects, but more expression of the subjective feelings of the painter on the depiction of the object. At the same time, impressionist oil painting focuses on the light and color in different weather environments at different times and places between the light and dark changes, so that the oil painting in the color performance is more rich and gorgeous full, and impressionist oil painting more emphasis on outdoor sketching in the creation of the importance of oil painting. In particular, the impressionist oil painting is not deliberately "realistic", so that the oil painting works and photographic works have a more obvious difference.

The creation of impressionist oil painting ended the situation of "domination" of realistic oil painting in the western painting world for hundreds of years, marking the development of western painting from the classical realistic "monistic" era to the era of diversification. At the same time, Impressionist oil painting, as the forerunner of Western modern painting, enlightened and gave birth to Cubist Abstraction and the emergence of Western modern painting. Cézanne, the master of post-impressionist oil painting, is regarded as the "father of modern Western painting".

In summary, we say that Impressionist oil is a turning point in the development of Western painting.