David Peat

The End of Representation 107For such an illusion to work, visual doubt must be abandoned, or atleast bracketed out of the equation. In the end, all this was to change associety changed.ImpressionismBy the middle of the nineteenth century a new social class had emergedin France. These were neither rich nor poor but the petite bourgeoisiewho owned shops, worked in factories, lived in the new suburbs, anddelighted in the dancing at Bals Musette or picnicking by the Seine.Theirs was not the world of the official Salon with its vast historicalcanvases. It was a smaller world, more immediate and concerned witheveryday objects. Soon it had a group of painters who would complementtheir more modest and less blatantly “heroic” worldview.The Impressionists painted out of doors, or at least began many oftheir paintings in the open air. This was made possible by the inventionof paint in tubes, an example of that constant link between art,science, and technology. Impressionist canvases are generally smallenough to be carried outdoors, along with an easel, and the motifspainted are those of everyday life—riverbank strolling, picnics, dances,cafés, and a train station.It is a great oversimplification to see Impressionism as a single consistentmovement in art. The fact is that for a few years a small groupof painters were sufficiently like-minded to exhibit together and sometimeseven paint side by side. But fairly soon each of them was to pursuehis or her own particular vision and approach. For this reason it iseasy to identify the work of individual painters compared with, forexample, trying to figure out if a cubist painting is by Braque or Picasso.Yet there is one thing that all held in common, and that was the significanceand immediacy of visual sensation.The greatest consistency to this original vision of Impressionismlies with Claude Monet. He was concerned with the immediacy ofthings and the act of seeing. The validity of the visual impression camefirst, rather than attempting to fit what had been seen into some predeterminedstructure—a classical arrangement of figures, for example,