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Impressionism
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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. Named after Monet's Impression, Sunrise at the group's first exhibition of 1874, it went on to reshape European painting.
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| Before the Name | The Group Years | Into the Century | ||||||
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| The group held together for twelve years and eight exhibitions. What it discovered outlasted it by half a century. | ||||||||
1863 — 1874
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 — 1886
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.
After 1886
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 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.
