Impressionism, an art movement pioneered by a handful of avant-garde painters based in Paris in the 1870s, gave academic oil painting a vivacity and spontaneity it had previously lacked, and remains to this day the single most popular style of art for gallery-goers and amateur painters alike. This elegantly-written book, by a professional artist and scholar, is both an instructional guide to incorporating Impressionist techniques into your own painting, and an illuminating investigation into how those first Impressionists actually painted their pictures. As such, it will fascinate both the painter and the art historian. This new book provides detailed advice on paints, brushes and canvas, as used by the original Impressionists and still widely available today. It discusses the process of making an Impressionist painting from initial vision to final completion and analyses the role of composition, light and tone, colour and paint handling. Finally, it gives an overview of the subject matter most closely associated with the Impressionists.

This is excellent and a worthy successor to Dunstan’s oeuvre. Bruce Yardley examines in considerable detail not just the way the Impressionists worked, but how they looked, saw and interpreted, which is after all the heart of their vision. If you want to have a go at being an Impressionist yourself, Bruce provides plenty of information about original brushes, paints and canvases and explains where they can still be obtained. If you love and want to understand the Impressionists, this is a very thorough guide. -- Henry Malt * artbookreview *
This is an excellent guide to working freely and loosely in oils. -- Henry Malt, reviewer The Artist * The Artist *
What a treat you have in store with this book: the Impressionists and Bruce Yardley. -- Jane Stroud, Leisure Painter * Leisure Painter *

Bruce Yardley has been a professional painter for twenty-five years, with over forty one-man shows to his name at prestigious galleries in the UK and overseas. He works exclusively in oil, within the English tradition of tonally-sensitive Impressionism. Bruce is also a trained historian, with a doctorate from Oxford University.