《英语流行话题阅读:语境识词4500》44 Trees Are Violet

（单词翻译）

　　Unit 44
Trees Are Violet
In 1874, fifty-five artists held the first independent group show of Impressionist art. Most of them, including Canne, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, and his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot -- "a bunch of lunatics and a woman," remarked one observer -- had been rejected by the Salon¹, the annual French state-sponsored exhibition that offered the only real opportunity for artists to display and sell their work. Never mind, they told each other. At the Salon, paintings were stacked three or four high, and crowded too closely together on the walls. At their independent exhibition, mounted in what was formerly² a photographer's studio, the artists could hang their works at eye level with space between them. Although the artists didn't call themselves "Impressionists" at first, this occasion would be the first of eight such "Impressionist" exhibits over the next twelve years.
An outraged³ critic, Louis Leroy, coined the label "Impressionist". He looked at Monet's Impression Sunrise, the artist's sensory⁴ response to a harbor at dawn, painted with sketchy⁵ brushstrokes. "Impression!" the journalist scoffed⁶. "Wallpaper in its embryonic⁷ state is more finished!" Within a year, the name Impressionism was an accepted term in the art world.
If the name was accepted, the art itself was not. In impressionist paintings, trees are violet; the sky is the color of fresh butter... Although some people appreciated the new paintings, many did not. The critics agreed the Impressionists couldn't draw and their colors were considered vulgar. Their compositions were strange. Their short, hurried brushstrokes made their paintings practically illegible⁸.
Impressionism broke every rule of the French Academy of Fine Arts, the conservative school that had dominated art training and taste since 1648. Impressionist scenes of modern urban and country life were a far cry from the Academic efforts to teach moral lessons through historic, and mythological⁹ themes. This tradition, drawn¹⁰ from ancient Greek and Roman art, featured idealized images. Symmetrical compositions, hard outlines, and smooth pain surfaces characterized academic paintings.
Despite the Academy's power, seeds of artistic¹¹ and political unrest had been sown long before 1874. The mid-19th century was a time of political instability in France. During the Revolution of 1848, Parisian workers with socialist¹² goals overthrew¹³ the monarchy¹⁴, only to see conservatives seize the reins¹⁵ of government later that year. Fear of further uprisings created widespread distrust among the aristocracy, the poor, and the newly prosperous bourgeoisie or middle class. Meanwhile, the far-reaching Industrial Revolution fostered a new faith in the individual and his unlimited¹⁶ potential. Romantic painters began to celebrate individuality in terms of painting technique with warm colors and vigorous brushstrokes. The Impressionists brought together a variety of influences, beliefs, and styles when they first exhibited in Paris. Their rejection¹⁷ of the Academy and the Academy’s rejection of them united the group.