Impressionism: How a Mocking Review Named a Movement

In the spring of 1874, a group of painters rented a photographer's former studio in Paris to show their work outside the official Salon. Ten days after the doors opened, a satirical newspaper handed them the name we still use.

Paris, April 1874

On 15 April 1874, an exhibition opened at 35 boulevard des Capucines, in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, on one of the busiest streets in Paris. About thirty artists showed 165 works there until mid-May.¹

They had organized it themselves. Camille Pissarro helped set up their cooperative, whose charter was modeled on the rules of a local bakers' union.²

Among Claude Monet's entries was a small, hazy view of a harbor at dawn. Asked for a title for the catalog, and judging that it could hardly pass for a view of Le Havre, Monet simply called it Impression.³

“L'exposition des impressionnistes”

Louis Leroy's headline in Le Charivari, 25 April 1874

The critic Louis Leroy turned Monet's title into a joke. A few days later, another critic, Jules Castagnary, used the word as a compliment. The insult stuck, and became a name.³

What is Impressionism?

Impressionism is a way of painting that took shape in France from the early 1860s. Painters worked outdoors, quickly, to catch the passing effects of sunlight and weather.⁴

An Impressionist picture doesn't describe every detail. It records how a scene looked, and felt, for one moment.

How to recognize it

Broken brushstrokes. Quick, separate dabs of paint instead of smooth, blended surfaces.⁴

Light before detail. Working fast in the open air pushed painters to look at light and color first.⁴

Everyday subjects. Rivers, gardens, streets and family rooms rather than gods and battles.⁴

One precise moment. A time of day, a season, a kind of weather. Often, the real subject is the light itself.

The painting that named a movement

Monet painted Impression, Sunrise from his room at the Hôtel de l'Amirauté in Le Havre, looking down on the harbor in the early morning. The Musée Marmottan Monet, which owns it, says he worked in just a few hours, and added the rowboats and the bright orange sun at the very end.³

In 2014, an astronomer added an unusual footnote. By reconstructing the sun, the tides and the smoke drifting across the picture, his team proposed the most likely moment it shows.⁵

Did paint tubes make it possible?

Partly. In 1841, the American portrait painter John Rand, then living in London, patented a collapsible metal tube for artists' colors.⁶ Before that, oil paint was often kept in pig's bladders that dried out and burst.⁷

Tubes made it practical to carry a full palette into a field. But outdoor painting came first: John Constable was already sketching in oils outdoors around 1813 to 1817.⁴ The tube made it easier. The Impressionists made it the point.

Five Impressionists to know

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

The painter whose title named the movement. In 1874 he also showed a view of the very boulevard where the exhibition was held.¹ See Impression, Sunrise at the Musée Marmottan Monet.

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)

She showed ten works in 1874, as many as Degas.¹ The Musée d'Orsay describes her as the first woman to exhibit with the group; her Cradle (1872) was her first image of motherhood, later a favorite subject.⁸

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)

A founder of the cooperative, and the only artist associated with the movement to show in all eight Impressionist exhibitions.²

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)

In 1874 he sat on the committee that decided where each picture would hang, and showed seven works of his own.¹

Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)

A painter who became the group's chief organizer and financial backer. His bequest to the French state led, in 1897, to the first display of Impressionist paintings in a French museum.⁹