Artists and Paintings: Everything You Need to Know About Impressionism

Impressionism is one of the most significant movements of modern art. The names of Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, or Edgar Degas are widely recognized, even by those with little interest in art. Their works achieve record prices at auctions and continue to attract large audiences in museums around the world. Why does Impressionism still resonate with people today? We have gathered everything you need to know to understand Impressionism.

Before Impressionism

Eugene Delacroix was one of the artists that influenced the Impressionists. He was one of the first artists to realize that colors, applied with individual unmixed strokes, can more intensely convey the dynamics of the depicted moment. Besides using contrasting colors, he also tended to believe that a painting’s theme should resonate with modern life.

Even though Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) is a masterpiece of Romanticism this did not prevent it from becoming a precursor of Impressionism. The painting displayed almost all the features that would, forty years later, define Impressionism: a break from classical clean lines, vibrant colors, dynamic brushstrokes; and the new ways of recreating the play of light on the canvas.

However, the fundamental difference between Liberty Leading the People and the artworks of Impressionism is that the subject of the painting is made-up. The Impressionists aimed to depict reality as it is, capturing life in the here and now.

The art of Gustave Courbet also had an influence on the Impressionists. He admired Delacroix, but he wanted to depict ordinary objects and real things. He wanted realism—frank and imperfect.

The artist who best summarized the legacy of Delacroix and Courbet was Édouard Manet. He became the first “artist of modern life,” and inspired a group of young artists who had been rejected by the Académie. These artists united in the first movement of truly modern art—Impressionism. Although he did not set out to be a rebel, Manet found himself at odds with the Académie and became a leading figure for a group of dissident artists.

The Evolution of the Movement

At the heart of this new art movement was Paris in the second half of the 19th century. In 1863, after an unsuccessful attempt to be admitted to the Salon, the future Impressionists organized their own alternative exhibition for artists rejected by the official jury.

Its organization was facilitated by Napoleon III himself—not out of kindness, of course, but for political reasons. Thanks to him, however, that the unappreciated artists were given a platform to showcase their work. It sent a clear signal that there was an alternative to the stagnant art of the Académie. The exhibition was called the Salon des Refusés (Exhibition of Rejects). While it did not impress ordinary visitors, it filled the young artists with new ideas.

10 year later, up-and-coming artists formed the Anonymous Society of Artists, Sculptors, Engravers, and Others, and began organizing what would later be called the First Impressionist Exhibition. The show took place on April 15, 1974, at 35 Boulevard Capuchib in Paris and brought together 30 artists. There was no selection panel, and anyone who paid the fee could take part. Alongside the young painters, a well-established Eugène Boudin, who greatly influenced Manet, also displayed his works.

Reviews of this innovative style were unfavorable. The critic Louis Leroy published a devastating piece on the exhibition titled “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” in the newspaper Le Charivari. In doing so, he unintentionally provided the name for the new movement and described its defining features.

Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.

Louis Leroy, “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” in Le Charivari, April 25, 1874.

Key Impressionists

The key Impressionists include Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas, to name a few.

The Principles of Impressionism

The main features of Impressionism include:

• a truthful depiction of scenes from modern life;
• modern, urban, and everyday subjects;
• the use of vivid, natural colors;
• dynamic brushstrokes, with colors often left unmixed;
• a desire to capture the fleeting nature of a moment, movement, and atmosphere;
• a focus on the play of light rather than precise detail;
• painting outdoors rather than in the studio in order to capture natural light effects, which meant scenes were rarely staged.

Over time, Impressionism grew steadily in popularity, eventually becoming an iconic movement—and the first truly modern art movement.

After the exhibition of 1874, seven more followed over the next twelve years. By 1886, ideological differences had caused the Impressionists, as a group, to drift apart. The artists themselves, however, did not disappear. They continued to work, develop their styles, and—in most cases—remained Impressionists. Like a divorced couple, they simply went their separate ways.

Impressionism became one of the most influential artistic movements and a foundation of modern art. The movement gave birth to the ideas of the “color game” and the simplified depiction of objects. Its evolution reshaped art in the 19th and 20th centuries.

If you want to dive deeper into the history of the movement and truly understand its most important artists, check out our French Impressionism Online Course—the first lesson is free. By the end of the course, you’ll have a complete and confident understanding of Impressionism.