Renaissance to Impressionism

On reading Smith’s Defining Impressionism what captured me was the interpretation of Impressionism as the heroic act of rebellion, that the art “owes its virtue to the heroic individual who made it.” While in this phrase Smith was making an attempt to imbue impressionism with something more than simply an idea whose time has come, rather how it is an art form that is rich and is “a vehicle which can carry an imaginative world,” it inherently implies that impressionism was in fact perceived, in part as virtuous only as endeavor undertaken by the brave. An act of rebellion against the dominating ideal of art during that time, which was the conservative, classical training under the example of landscape painters and the emphasis of the state-run institutions on “historical and classical” subject matter placing Renaissance art as the “correct” mode. Renaissance art, which placed much value the human form, the divine beauty of man and realism was perceived in juxtaposition to Impressionism which was concerned with subjectivity and representing the subject on the grounds of an “impression” or “sensation.” I would like to suggest that Impressionism is not a headlong crash into Renaissance and a heroic rebellion to it (along with the landscape art of that time). Rather, I suggest that impressionism can be viewed as a new movement of Renaissance as far as it being a celebration of man not as subject but as artist. That it is the artists sensation’s which is of highest value. Of course, this makes it difficult to judge an impressionist art work since how can one judge how accurately a painting captured the artists sensation, hence the temptation to perceive impressionism as many things, such as it being simply a heroic act of rebellion, and not a mode of art.