Key Points
- Sunlight Changed Everything: Impressionism revolutionized painting by making light the main subject. It wasn’t just illumination — it was emotion, motion, atmosphere.
- From Studios to Nature: The invention of portable paint tubes allowed artists to paint en plein air, capturing fleeting moments in real time.
- A Living Legacy: Contemporary artists still carry the torch, using light as a visual language to express mood, memory, and presence.
- More Than a Style: Impressionism evolved into a sensibility — a way of seeing the world that embraces transience, color, and immediacy.
- A Counter to the Digital Age: In a world dominated by screens and artificial light, painting natural sunlight offers a moment of reconnection with the real and the poetic.
There is one word that has revolutionized modern painting more than any academic theory: sunlight. Not just as a physical phenomenon, but as pictorial matter, as visual emotion, as a revelation of the world. For the Impressionist masters, sunlight was not a mere detail — it was the very subject of the artwork.
With the advent of oil paint in tubes in the mid-19th century, artists were finally able to leave their studios and paint outdoors. This seemingly technical innovation opened the door to a true revolution. Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and their peers began to chase sunlight through leaves, across rivers, in the folds of garments, and on the flickering surfaces of faces. Painting en plein air became a method — and a philosophy.
The technique changed radically: quick brushstrokes, pure colors, light and almost shimmering layers. Shadows were no longer black but blue, violet, green. Everything became vibration. Time was not frozen, but alive. Each painting captured a unique moment of sunlight on a landscape, a person, an atmosphere.
This pursuit never ended. On the contrary, it has continued to inspire generations of artists well beyond Impressionism. Even today, many contemporary works — quite literally — reflect that same attention to sunlight, to nature’s transience, to the poetry of the fleeting moment.
On ArtMajeur, one can see how alive this legacy still is: landscapes that tremble at dusk, portraits playing with the golden reflections of morning, seas igniting with incandescent hues. Impressionism, more than a style, has become a sensibility. And sunlight, an art form.
In a world dominated by screens and artificial light, these artists — then and now — remind us of the value of looking up and painting what changes every second: once again, THE LIGHT!
Wildflower Serenade (2025) Painting by Irina Laube
1. Irina Laube – Wildflower Serenade (2025)
The title sounds almost like music, and Irina Laube’s canvas plays exactly that: a visual song of wildflowers dancing under a deep sky. German-born with a background in realism, Irina has transformed her love for nature into a painterly language made of texture, light, and shimmering colors. In Wildflower Serenade, sunlight seems to filter through the brushstrokes, gently touching every flower, every water reflection.
Like the late 19th-century Impressionists—whom we can easily imagine painting outdoors—Laube captures the fleeting moment of light. Her technique, balancing control and spontaneity, translates into visual harmonies that echo the free gestures of the past… but with a thoroughly contemporary sensibility.
Fog of the past 0 (2024) Painting by Dmitry Oleyn
2. Dmitry Oleyn – Fog of the past 0 (2024)
What happens when Impressionism meets the melancholy of the postmodern? The answer lies in the works of Dmitry Oleyn, a Ukrainian painter with a dreamy touch and impeccable technique. Fog of the Past 0 is a seascape immersed in bluish tones, as light as the fog it depicts: a few boats, gentle waves, diffused light.
Like Monet in London, Oleyn paints soft, ambient light. The surface of the sea becomes a shimmering veil, a suspended emotion. He works only with natural materials, and each canvas is a unique piece—like an intimate memory. His goal? To bring warmth into every home, just like the light once filtering through curtains in Renoir’s paintings.
warm wind (2025) Painting by Pavel Filin
3. Pavel Filin – Warm Wind (2025)
The golden path, the trees bent by the wind, the sky opening to a deep blue: Warm Wind is a small masterpiece of energy and immediacy. Pavel Filin, a Russian painter who relocated to the Czech Republic, has chosen to favor the palette knife over the brush, creating a living, breathing texture on the canvas.
His approach echoes the boldness of post-impressionist Van Gogh and the chromatic freedom of the more daring Impressionists. But there's also something deeply personal—an emotional urgency that pulses through the rhythm of his strokes. For Filin, painting is about feeling. And in Warm Wind, light becomes almost audible, like a piece of music carried by the sound of the wind.
The Sumène at the foot of the rocks (2024) Painting by Anne Baudequin
4. Anne Baudequin – The Sumène at the Foot of the Rocks (2024)
Anne Baudequin paints the way one writes a haiku: by observing, waiting, and capturing the moment. In The Sumène at the Foot of the Rocks, water flows between stones, shadows shift slowly, and sunlight dances through the leaves. It’s a painting meant to be created alla prima, painted en plein air, with the quickness required to seize what is constantly changing.
Baudequin carries the legacy of the great 19th-century French landscape painters, but she translates it through a contemporary and feminine voice. Each of her paintings is an act of wonder, a love letter to nature. Among reflections, changing skies, and riverine silences, Impressionism is reborn with grace.
Fires of the Sunset. (2025) Painting by Olga Pravdina
5. Olga Pravdina – Fires of the Sunset (2025)
With Fires of the Sunset, Olga Pravdina delivers a true ode to burning light. Reds, pinks, and oranges scatter across the water like sparks. Sky and sea merge into a warm and overwhelming symphony. Yes, it’s a sunset—but it’s also a dance between light and matter.
Trained in Crimea and now also working as an interior designer, Pravdina combines technical precision with personal flair. Like the great Impressionists, she understands that every color holds a temperature, an emotion. Her works don’t just depict—they radiate.
There is something eternally young about Impressionism. Perhaps it is because it is not a style, but a gaze. Looking at the world as if for the first time. Looking for the changing light. Seeing the poetry in the everyday. These artists do it every day, with passion and authenticity. And whether today, instead of wearing a straw hat, they paint in the studio or exhibit online, the spirit remains the same: painting sunlight, before it disappears.
FAQ
1. Why is sunlight so central to Impressionism?
Because light defines how we perceive color, mood, and time. For Impressionists, sunlight wasn’t a background element — it was the subject, constantly shifting and never the same twice.
2. How did Impressionist techniques differ from traditional painting?
They used quick, broken brushstrokes, unmixed colors, and avoided black shadows. They painted outdoors to capture real-life lighting and moments as they happened.
3. Do contemporary artists still paint like the Impressionists?
Yes — many are inspired by their philosophy and visual approach. Today’s artists adapt Impressionist principles to their own voices, using modern tools, materials, and perspectives.
4. Is Impressionism still relevant in today’s digital art world?
Absolutely. Impressionism offers a human, sensory alternative to digital aesthetics. It emphasizes slowness, observation, and emotional connection — values increasingly rare in fast-paced, screen-heavy culture.
5. What do today’s artists bring to this legacy?
They blend tradition with modernity: using sunlight, texture, abstraction, or symbolic palettes to express personal emotions and contemporary narratives.
6. Can Impressionist-style painting exist outside of France?
Definitely. While rooted in France, Impressionism’s spirit — capturing light, nature, and ephemeral beauty — transcends geography. Artists worldwide, from Ukraine to Germany to the U.S., continue its evolution.
7. Why is light so emotional in painting?
Because it’s transient, intimate, and universal. Light reveals, conceals, warms, and moves. In art, it can evoke everything from joy to nostalgia to spiritual awe.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli