section_path: History/19th century in Europe
section_name: 19th century in Europe
paragraph_text: 19th century in Europe
  
  Patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. Three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century. An objective interest in what is seen can be discerned from the paintings of John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Camille Corot and from them to the Impressionists who continued the plein air painting of the Barbizon school.Early intimations of a new art had been made by James McNeill Whistler who, in his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The falling Rocket, (1872), placed greater emphasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects. Even earlier than that, with her 'spirit' drawings, Georgiana Houghton 's choice to work with abstract shapes correlate with the unnatural nature of her subject, in a time when abstraction" isn't yet a concept (she organized an exhibit in 1871).
  
  Expressionist painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged paintings that were reactions to and perceptions of contemporary experience; and reactions to Impressionism and other more conservative directions of late 19th-century painting. The Expressionists drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch and James Ensor drew influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century. Paul Cézanne had begun as an Impressionist but his aim – to make a logical construction of reality based on a view from a single point, with modulated color in flat areas – became the basis of a new visual art, later to be developed into Cubism.
  
  Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe mysticism and early modernist religious philosophy as expressed by theosophist Mme. Blavatsky had a profound impact on pioneer geometric artists like Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. The mystical teaching of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky also had an important influence on the early formations of the geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early 20th century. The spiritualism also inspired the abstract art of Kasimir Malevich and František Kupka.