How can the same place look different? What’s the difference between an impressionist landscape and, say, a realist or romanticist one? Well, the difference is huge and strikes the eye once you know what to look for. The romanticists used nature as just another way to reveal inner conflict, the eternal struggle between…

man and nature, nature and time, life and death through catching allegories, the complexity and turmoil, the extravaganza of geography, the sharp contrasts of colour. The realists, on the other hand, got rid of everything one-of-a-kind and looked for similarities, the typical and the essential features of their subjects, and so their landscapes are as feasible and life-like as it gets – the artists strive to imitate nature, not to make it artistic. And the impressionists flirted with nature and conveyed the glimpses of the most appealing places. They ruled out the deep feelings, pose, balance and stability of any kind – anything that makes a painting opinionated. The fact is that any impressions deeper than glilpses and glances are ruled out, since they need focus, and focus is not what impressionists were willing to do). Instead, they highlighted the charm of the first impression, they depicted things the way you see them for the first time. That accounts for the evanescence of their landscape, the diffusing contours, the splashes and vibrations of light, the insentisivity to details, and the reckless composition with no vivid center. An impressionist landscape looks as real as it is reflected in our mind during a walk – the eye catches one thing and another, the mind snatches away something that stands out, and you remember the impression rather than a photographic image, everything out of direct focus is vague and elusive. With nothing else being worth attention, the main characters on the impressionis canvases are light and air.