“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

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists, who began exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s.

Titled from “Impression”
The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Visible brushstrokes and Emphasis on Light
Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, light colors, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, and unusual visual angles.

The influence of the Impressionists is thought to have spread beyond the art world, leading to Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Impressionism also describes art created in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

Breaking Rules of Academic Painting
Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colors, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix.

They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still lifes and portraits, but also landscapes, had been painted indoors, but the Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air.

They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed color, not smoothly blended, as was the custom at the time. For example, instead of physically mixing yellow and blue paint, they placed unmixed yellow paint on the canvas next to unmixed blue paint, so that the colors would mingle in the eye of the viewer to create the "impression" of green. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details.

Regional Impressionism
Although the rise of Impressionism in France happened at a time when a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting, the Impressionists developed new techniques that were specific to the movement. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it was an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of color.

The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if it did not receive the approval of the art critics and establishment.

Influence of Impressionism
By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which would follow, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

In Nutshell

Terminology
The derogatory term was coined by critic Louis Leroy of the Parisian journal Le Charivari in response to the unfinished quality of Monet's Impression: Sunrise of 1872 (exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874). For Leroy, the work appeared more like an "impression" rather than a finished, factual painting. The artists came to like this term and adopt it for themselves.
Artists
Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet (who never exhibited with the Impressionists), Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Rodin, and Alfred Sisley.
Timeline
1874-1886 (8 group exhibitions are held between these dates).
Started In
France.
About
The Impressionists, who initially exhibited as the "Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers," formed in opposition to the government-sponsored Salon. Artists were concerned with the transient effects of light and atmosphere on natural or man-made objects. The fragmented, painterly brushwork of Impressionism makes it a forerunner of the modern notion that a painting is an art object not subject to the constraints of nature. The group's aims were best represented by painters, though some sculptors (Rodin, Degas, Renoir) did manage to employ their concerns with light and reflection onto media other than paint and canvas. Toward the end, many of the Impressionists pursued separate paths with respect to subject matter and style. Impressionism's "joy of life" attitude makes it one of the most loved and popular movements in modern art.
Theme
Contemporary life: sunny landscapes (painted out-of-doors rather than in a studio), cityscapes, portraits, and leisure scenes (dance halls, opera, ballet, bars, picnics, etc.).
Art Style
Bright colors (in contrast to dark, muted tones of Academic paintings) applied in visible, sketchy strokes. These strokes were meant to merge in the viewer's eyes, not the artist's palette. Shadows were painted with color, not black as before. Glazes and heavy varnishes were hardly ever used.
Known Work
RENOIR, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876.
MONET, Impression: Sunrise, 1872.
Inspiration
Delacroix, Barbizon School, Manet, Realism, photography, and Japanese prints.
Become Inspiration Of
Post-Impressionists, Fauves, and to some extent most other late 19th century and early 20th century movements.