Decorative Impressionism

Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The Decorative Impressionist."

However, use of the term has been revived in recent decades by the influential and prolific art historian William H. Gerdts to describe the figurative works of not only Frieseke, but some of his Giverny compatriots including Richard E. Miller, Louis Ritman and Robert Reid. The same term has been applied to other Giverny school painters who painted the figure including Guy Rose, Karl Anderson and Karl Albert Buehr. Decorative Impressionism describes a way of painting the human figure that attempts to reconcile academic techniques with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist influences.

The works of these artists tend to be either high-key outdoor depictions of women in languid poses, or interior scenes with the figures illuminated by natural light from windows. Many of these highly decorative paintings have a recognizable influence from Japanese art or Japonisme, with the strong use of patterns in the backgrounds. The work of the originators of first Decorative Impressionists was popular from about 1905 until the mid-1920s, but the style continued until at least the middle of the 20th century through the work of some of the students of the Giverny painters and, the style has been revived in recent years by some contemporary figurative painters.

While American artists had been painting in the small village of Giverny since the 1880s, the group of painters who developed the characteristic style known as Decorative Impressionism settled in Normandy after the turn of the 20th Century. They came to a similar way of working because their academic training was similar; they were aware and interested in the developments of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; and wanted to adopt some elements from these movements into their own work. Each of them had their own way of working, their own degree of solidity on their figures and their own style of brushwork, but they were all joined together by the beauty of their subjects and their decorative approach.

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