19th century
Impressionism
Impressionism was a movement of French painters who, from the 1860s to 1886, made the changing effects of natural light the true subject of painting, working outdoors in rapid, visible brushstrokes.
Schools of the 1800s
Impressionist Paintings in Our Collection
Laughing BoyMore from this school
Impressionist Style Paintings
The most direct link to the movement in our own collection is Adolphe Félix Cals, who exhibited at the Salon des Refusés of 1863 and took part in the first Impressionist exhibitions alongside Monet and Pissarro. Around him stand the painters of the generation that followed, carrying the school's light from the 1890s into the twentieth century. For a collector's view of that second generation, read our guide to the painters beyond the famous names.
- 1863 Salon des Refusés
- 1869 Monet and Renoir at La Grenouillère
The Lesson of Barbizon
Impressionism did not appear from nowhere. Its founders learned to paint outdoors from the Barbizon generation, and several of its future members exhibited at the Salon des Refusés of 1863 alongside older independents. What changed in the late 1860s was the subject and the speed. Instead of the forest, the young painters turned to modern life, riverbanks, gardens, railway stations. And instead of finished studio pictures, they pursued the fleeting effect of light itself, captured in rapid, visible brushstrokes.
- 1874 First group exhibition
- 1877 The group at full strength
Eight Exhibitions
The first group exhibition opened in Paris in 1874, and a critic's mockery of Monet's Impression, Sunrise gave the movement its name. Eight exhibitions followed until 1886, showing Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Morisot and their circle. Beyond the famous names, a wide generation of French painters adopted the Impressionist manner, high-keyed colour, broken brushwork, ordinary subjects seen in natural light. It is this broader school, exhibited at the Salons and collected in its own time, that endures in collections today.
- 1886 Eighth and last exhibition
- 1890s Monet's series paintings
When the Revolution Became a Language
By the 1890s the revolution had become a language. Post-Impressionists such as Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh built on its conquests, and plein-air painting in the Impressionist manner continued well into the twentieth century across France. Its way of seeing still shapes how modern eyes expect a painting to look.
The Impressionists' own dealer said America saved him from ruin.
By 1886 the Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had bought so many Monets and Renoirs that he was close to bankruptcy. That year he took them to New York, and American collectors bought. “Without America I would have been lost, ruined, after having bought so many Monets and Renoirs,” he said. “The two exhibitions there in 1886 saved me.”
Impressionism
Who Trained Our Painters
Our painters in this tradition, and the studios where they learned.
Trained byLéon Cogniet
GalerieClub Fine Art
1,100+
paintings sold since 2017
Our promise
- Every painting photographed front and back
- The frame you see is the frame that ships
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