Identifying Artists, Works, and Schools of 2D Visual Art - CLEP Humanities

Impressionism was a significant artistic movement developed in France during the late nineteenth century that utilized visible brushstrokes, representations of natural light, and everyday scenes. Challenging traditional ideas of art, the movement was initially derided by critics, but proved hugely influential. Its leading artists included Éduouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne. Henri Matisse was a full generation younger than the impressionists, and was highly influenced by them, but helped develop modern art in the early twentieth century.

Delacroix was a famous nineteenth-century painter known for his orientalist paintings, which illustrated Middle Eastern culture and lifestyle to a Western audience.

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who reacted to the previous generation's bold romanticism and his contemporary critics' love of history painting by developing what he termed "realism." Courbet wished to use his painting to comment on social issues and values, which he felt were valuable topics on which a painter might focus. Courbet sought out landscapes, portraits, and still lifes that depicted the everyday in rough, honest brushstrokes.

Even if the image is not instantly recognizable as Vincent van Gogh, the piece of art has many of his hallmarks. This 1889 self-portrait features expressive colors, deep texture in the paint, and an emotional style. Van Gogh was one of the premier post-impressionists of the late nineteenth century, who took the emotional and innovative elements of Impressionism to new artistic ground.

This painting, an 1899 self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, stands firmly in the tradition of post-impressionism. Post-impressionists took many of the elements of the Impressionists of a generation earlier, including visible brushstrokes, emotional concerns, and everyday scenes, and pushed them further. As seen in this work, the paint is extremely thick and textured, with bright, almost unrealistic colors sharpening the image.

The Hudson River School was a group of painters in the early part of the nineteenth century who gathered in communities along the Hudson River in New York. These artists were heavily inspired by the romantic movement coming out of Europe and painted dramatic landscapes. Prominent members of the Hudson River School were Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Edwin Church.

Jacques-Louis David first made a name for himself as a historical painter in the 1780s, but his republican sympathies meant he was allied with French revolutionaries. This benefitted him most by allowing him to become the Emperor Napoleon's official court painter. Famous for his portraits of Napoleon, and particularly his large Coronation of Napoleon from 1806, David's style featured bold expressions, bright colors, and dramatic poses.

The work of Matthew Brady during the American Civil War pioneered many notable aspects of photography, which was still a new medium and had mostly been devoted to portraiture. Brady's willingness to document the Civil War by going to battlefields reframed the possibilities for photography, notably allowing for the development of photojournalism.

John James Audubon was a Frenchman who came to America in 1803 to avoid the Napoleonic Wars. He made a name for himself in the early nineteenth century as a painter of wildlife and landscapes of the then vast American frontier. His The Birds of America, published in sections between 1827 and 1838, not only was a remarkable work of art by an American artist, but helped ornithology immensely in understanding avian wildlife in America.

Impressionism grew popular in the nineteenth century as a reaction to France's main artistic competition, the Salon de Paris. The Salon's judges valued grand themes, realistic portrayals, and fine brushwork, whereas the Impressionists focused on everyday scenes, emotional depictions, and visible, thick brushstrokes. Some of the major impressionists include Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet.

Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Joan Miró were all connected as artists through their use of color and experimentation with forms. Nonetheless, each artist developed his own unique style that largely stood apart from other artists. Van Gogh's postimpressionistic style built on impressionism, while Matisse and Miro's deconstruction of form and representation exploded many of impressionism's notions of art.

Frederic Remington was a native New Yorker who began his career as a painter and illustrator for magazines after the Civil War. After going on assignment to illustrate a magazine article on the Apache leader Geronimo in 1886, Remington began to paint and sculpt images of the American West exclusively. Remington's style was naturalistic and empathetic to his subjects, and also had a natural ability to capture accurate movement. Remington's images of the Old West are some of the most famous images of cowboys and Native Americans.

The Barbizon School was a group of painters led by Théodore Rousseau from 1830 to 1860. They painted many nature scenes, landscapes, and scenes of rural peasant life in France. They influenced American landscape painters and the Impressionists.

Based in France and the United States, Realism focused on accurately depicting nature. Landscapes done in a realistic style, and realistic drawings of peasant life are key topics in Realists' work. They were influenced by early photography.

All of the painters listed were influences on the Realist artists. Additional influences included Socialism and the European revolutions of 1848. The Realists eventually influenced the pre-Raphaelites and American Scene Painting.

Andy Warhol's most famous works are screen prints of familiar images, often in odd or bright colors. Jasper Johns appropriated national symbols in his paintings, but in altered forms. Roy Lichtenstein directly copied panels from comic books, down to the dialogue. All of these methods are representative of Pop Art, a 1950s and 60s artistic movement that sought to use popular forms and new technologies to change the nature of high art.

Cubism burst onto the art scene in Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century, with various artists creating avant garde images based more on representative shapes and symbols rather than strict representations. Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Georges Braques, and Fernand Leger were among its most notable proponents. Amedeo Modigliani was a contemporary of the cubists, but worked in modernist approaches to portraits that featured elongated lines and dark colors.

During the Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco's nationalist forces were supported by the German military led by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. In one of the more notable aspects of the war, the German Air Force bombed the Spanish, Republican-held town of Guernica in 1937. That same year, Pablo Picasso made a massive canvas, entirely in black and white, that used gruesome abstract shapes and symbols to convey war's horrors and tragedies. The painting was instantly famous, and caused Picasso to be unable to travel to Franco's Spain.

Fabergé is known for his ceramic eggs, also known as "Fabergé eggs," which were given as gifts to the Russian nobility during the early twentieth century.

Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in response to Franco's fascist Spain.