Impressionism
To view our Impressionist paintings
Part of our Art Movements & Schools series. See also our Barbizon School page and meet our Impressionist painters.
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 became the most influential movement in modern art.
Origins: 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 Refuses 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.
Origins (1863-1874) · The Group Years (1874-1886) · Legacy (1886 onward)
The Movement at Its Height
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 color, broken brushwork, ordinary subjects seen in natural light. It is this broader school, exhibited at the Salons and collected in its own time, that forms the accessible heart of the Impressionist market today.
Legacy
By the 1890s the revolution had become a language. Post-Impressionists such as Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh built on its conquests, and plein-air painting in the Impressionist manner continued well into the twentieth century across France. No movement has had a deeper influence on how modern eyes expect a painting to look.
Impressionism in Our Collection
Our collection includes Adolphe Felix Cals (1810-1880), who exhibited at the Salon des Refuses of 1863 and took part in the first Impressionist exhibitions alongside Monet and Pissarro, James Desvarreux-Larpenteur (1847-1937), whose landscapes carry the school's light into the 1890s, and Pierre Forest (1881-1971), who continued the plein-air tradition through half a century of harbours and skies.
