Impressionism is a way of painting a scene as it looks in one passing moment of light. Its painters used short, visible brushstrokes and bright color, and they often worked outdoors.
The movement began in Paris in the 1870s. It is named after Impression, Sunrise, the port of Le Havre at dawn as Claude Monet painted it in 1872.
In that canvas, an orange sun and its broken reflection hang over water and mist in tones of gray and blue. A few dark rowboats, masts and smokestacks dissolve in the haze.
In France at the time, a painter's career depended on the official Salon, an exhibition run by the state every year. Its juries, made up of established painters, chose which works went on its walls, and buyers followed their choices.
Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot no longer wanted to wait for that approval. In April 1874 they organized a show of their own on the boulevard des Capucines, a busy street in the center of Paris.
The rooms had served as the studio of Nadar, a well known photographer, and the show stayed open for a month.
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A critic gave the movement its name, and it began as an insult. On April 25, 1874, Louis Leroy published a mock review of the show in Le Charivari, a satirical newspaper. He built it on the first word of Monet's title, and the label stayed with the group through seven more exhibitions.
How a catalogue title became a joke
Impression, Sunrise got its title at the last minute, because of a small problem with the catalogue.
What You'll Discover
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Who never fit the Impressionist mold.
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Why the strokes look unfinished up close.
How a dealer took Impressionism to America.