Diaries of the Impressionists

The most vivid and significant phenomenon of French painting in the last third of the 19th century was Impressionism. Representatives of this movement, trying to oppose themselves to classical art, sought their own paths and forms of creative expression. The innovation and ideas of this direction completely changed the artistic perception of art in the 19th and 20th centuries. The history of studying Impressionism spans more than a century. The book Archives of Impressionism, published in 1939 by the renowned Italian art historian Lionello Venturi, is a collection of invaluable documents – letters from Impressionist artists addressed to Paul Durand-Ruel – their constant dealer and patron, whose biography is also included in the book. The most numerous are the letters from the main representatives of the group – Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Regular correspondence began in the early 1880s and continued until the artists' deaths. These letters illuminate the most diverse aspects of the artists' lives and activities: views on art, projects for new exhibitions and new works, negotiations with collectors, relationships among the artists themselves, descriptions of new areas visited in search of new motifs, reports of home troubles and joys, experienced material difficulties. The vivid individuality of the authors is expressed very clearly in the letters: the life-loving serenity of Renoir, the calm delicacy of Pissarro, the lively temperament of Monet. It is precisely in this lively corporeal fabric, woven from everyday events, that a clear and authentic picture of the life and creativity of remarkable painters, who went through a difficult path of struggle for new art, emerges.