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c h a p t e r 1: UNDERSTANDING LIGHTING, COLOR, AND COMPOSITION ■

Figure 1.22 Van Eyck. Giovanni Arnolni and His Wife Giovanna Cenami. 1434. Tempura

on wood. National Gallery, London.

Realism, as an art movement, appeared in the mid-19th century and placed a

premium on an accurately portrayed world with no hint of idealism or romanticism.

Realist artists include George Caleb Bingham (1811–79) and Jules Breton (1827–1906),

both of whom are noted for their accurately rendered outdoor scenes. Impression-

ism, centered in France in the 1860s and considered a branch of realism, sought to

faithfully portray light and color as perceived by the human eye. This attention to

light is illustrated by Figure 1.24. A woman stands at a bar in front of a large mirror.

The painting was created at a real location and was not staged in the artist’s studio

(this preference was known as “plein-air,” or “open-air”). Although the scene is quite

cluttered with detail, little attempt has been made to separate the woman from her

surroundings. That is, there is no artiﬁcial rim light or artifacts of a speciﬁc lighting

scheme. This is equally true of the bottles at the lower left; their forms begin to merge

into a single mass. (Although the lighting is accurately portrayed, the mirror’s reﬂec-

tion lacks the artist and skews the entire background for compositional convenience.)

Famous impressionistic painters include Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Claude Monet

(1840–1926), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), and Édouard Manet (1832–83).

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