The Impressionism was an artistic movement that revolutionized the painting deeply and he/she led off the great tendencies of the art of the century XX. There were some considerations general, much more practices than theoretical, that the artists proceeded in its technical procedures to obtain the results that characterized the impressionist painting.

Main Characteristics:

• The painting should register the tonalities that the objects acquire when reflecting the solar light in a certain moment, because the colors of the nature constantly modify, depending on the incidence of the sunshine.
• The illustrations should not have clear contours, because the line is an abstraction of the human being to represent images.
• The shades should be luminous and colored, just as it is the visual impression that they cause us, and not dark or black, as the painters represent them in the past.
• The light contrasts and shade should be obtained in agreement with the law of the complemental colors. Thus, a close yellow to a violet produces a light impression and of much more real shade than the clear-darkness so valued by the Baroque painters.
• The colors and tonalities should not be obtained by the mixture of the inks in the painter's palette. On the contrary, they should be pure and dissociated in the pictures in small brushstrokes. He/she is the observer that, when admiring the painting, it combines the several colors, obtaining the final result. The mixture leaves, therefore, of being technical for if optical.

The first time that the public had contact with the work of the impressionists was in a collective exhibition accomplished in Paris, in April of 1874. But the public and the critic reacted very badly to the new movement, because they still stayed followerses to the academic beginnings of the painting.

Main artists:

Monet - incessant researcher of the light and its effects, he/she painted several reasons in several hours of the day, kindred of studying the colored mutations of the atmosphere with its brightness. Outstanding works: Women in the Garden and the Cathedral of Rouen in the middle of Sun.

Renoir - the impressionist painter that won larger popularity was and he/she did get to have the recognition of the critic, still in life. Its pictures manifest optimism, happiness and the intense movement of the Parisian life of the end of the century XIX. He/she painted the feminine body with pure and exempt forms of erotismo and sensuality, he/she preferred the nudes outdoors, the compositions with characters of the daily, the pictures and the dead natures. Outstanding works: Dance of la Moulin Galette and La Grenouillière.

Degas - its academic formation and its admiration for Ingres did with that valued the drawing and not just the color, that was the great passion of the Impressionism. Besides, it was painting of little landscapes and scenes outdoors. The atmospheres of its pictures are interior and the light is artificial. Its great concern was flagrar an instant of the people's life, to learn a moment of the movement of a body or of the expression of a face. He/she adored the theater of having danced. Outstanding work: The Rehearsal.

Seurat - Master in the pontilhismo. Outstanding work: Afternoon of Sunday in the Big Island Jatte.

Visconti (Brazilian) - him no longer he/she worries more in imitating classic models; it seeks, with determination, to register the effects of the solar light in the objectives and human beings that it portrays in its screens. It won a trip to Europe, where he/she had contact with the work of the impressionists. The influence that received from those artists was so big that he is considered the largest representative of that tendency in the Brazilian painting. Outstanding work: Trigal. For its knowledge - THE picture Women in the Garden, of Monet, it was totally painted outdoors and always with the sunshine. They are scenes of the garden of the artist's house. - The impressionist movement was idealized in the meetings with its main painters and them they happened in the photographic studio of Swiming, in Rue of Capucines, Paris.