AFA Autumn 2018

Autumn 94 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com I mpressionism was the first bombshell launched against the academic tradition in painting. On April 15, 1874, in an act of defiance against the official French government- sanctioned Salon exhibitions featuring traditional works, thirty self-proclaimed independent artists opened an exhibition at photographer Nadar’s vacated Paris studio. Shortly after, a satirical review that mocked Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise gave the movement its name. Impressionism defined light as color, becoming the first modern language of paint. The invention of metal tubes had made paint portable, enabling artists to paint en plein air. The style’s bright colors and loosely applied, unblended brush strokes could be manipulated to capture the charm of dappled light as well as the sun-washed brilliance of midday. Participants in the eight annual Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886 in Paris ranged from Paul Cezanne to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas to Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet to Odilon Redon. To be sure, one obvious thread running through such a mélange is each artist’s rejection of moribund academia. But, Alfred Sisley, one of the pioneers of the “new painting,” identified another important feature: “These effects of light, which have an almost material expression in nature, must be rendered in material fashion on the canvas. Objects must be portrayed in their particular context, and they must, especially, be bathed in light, as is the case in nature. The progress to be achieved in the future will consist in this.” More than a style, Impressionism championed modernism’s new intuition about light as color and color as substance. By the end of the nineteenth century, Impressionism was a worldwide movement.  Having lost his father early in the Civil War, Gaines Ruger Donoho was taken by his mother from the Mississippi cotton plantation, where he was born, to Vicksburg. After the war the family settled in Washington, D.C., and Donoho was educated and later employed as a draftsman in the offices of the Architect of the United States. Drawn to a career as an artist, he studied briefly with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League before embarking in 1879 for Paris and the Académie Julian. During the 1880s Donoho frequented artist communities in the Paris suburbs, such as Barbizon near the Forest of Fontainebleau. Consistently reflecting the distinct influence of such Barbizon painters as Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet, Donoho’s work of the period is marked by subdued colors and less radically expressive brushwork than typical Impressionist examples. From his base in Paris, Donoho exhibited in the annual Salons and established international credentials with prize-winning entries in New York and New Orleans. After nearly a decade in France he returned to America in 1887. Donoho made his permanent home in rural East Hampton on Long Island, where the gardens and grounds of his beloved estate inspired him for the remainder of his life. Gaines Ruger Donoho (1857–1916), Sheep, Late Afternoon, 1891. Oil on canvas, 24 x 44 inches. Impressionism the South