Impressionism(印象派) is a fonn of art that began in the 1870s. When you look closely at an impressionist painting, you see little dots of different colored paints. When you move away from the picture, the dots of colors blend together and the painting looks like it has light playing on the people and objects in the picture. Impressionist art is different from traditional art. Traditional painters were interested in the form of objects. The impressionists were interested in light and color. The impressionist painters wanted to paint natural light that was lively and bright. They tried to express the feeling of pure sunshine in their paintings.
When traditional artists mixed paints, they could not create the feeling of bright, natural light. Therefore, instead of mixing colors, the impressionists used small dots of pure colors. The viewers’ eyes put these unmixed colors together the same way they add color in light together. When you look at an impressionist painting, it feels the same as when you look at an object in lively, natural sunlight.
Traditional painters worked inside. Impressionist painters worked outside because they wanted to paint the effect of sunlight on objects. Monet, for example, made a series of paintings of a haystack. Every morning he went to a field with eight or ten paintings. All day, he sat in front of a haystack painting. Every hour he worked on a different picture. All of these paintings are pictures of the haystack, but they do not look the same. Monet made his paintings directly from the changing of nature, especially from different hours of sunlight. His study of the haystack is an hour by hour record of the artistry (艺术性) of light.
Traditional painters were interested in ______, while the impressionists were interested in