impressionnisme

Claude Monet exhibited Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) at the first independent exhibition of what became known as the Impressionists, held in Paris in April 1874. The critic Louis Leroy, writing in the satirical magazine Le Charivari on April 25, 1874, titled his review 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists' — using the word in mockery, to suggest that these painters offered only vague impressions rather than finished works.

The painters — Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley — had rejected the official Salon and its academic standards. They painted outdoors, in natural light, capturing transient effects: sunlight on water, shadows on snow, the movement of crowds, the shimmer of a ballet dancer's tutu. The Academic tradition demanded smooth surfaces and clearly delineated forms; the Impressionists wanted the sensation of light and movement, even at the cost of apparent incompleteness.

The word impressionnisme derived from Latin impressio (a pressing into, a mark made by pressing), from imprimere (to press upon). An impression was literally a mark made by contact — the pressed shape of a seal in wax, the stamp of a foot in mud. The painters had accepted the insult and made it their claim: they painted impressions, the marks that light left on the eye before the mind organized them.

Impressionism changed everything that came after. Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin), Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism all developed in response to what the Impressionists proved: that perception itself — not the thing perceived — could be the subject of painting. Leroy's taunt turned into the hinge of modern art history.