Study guide

Impressionism

An artwork-by-artwork guide to French Impressionism, 1860s–1890s, compiled from museum collection records.

Impressionism began as an argument about what painting should show and who should decide. In 1874 a group of painters turned their backs on the official Salon and held their own exhibition, filled with city streets, cafés, beaches and changing light. This section follows them through sixty works, from the Salon pictures they reacted against to Monet’s late water lilies and the turn toward Neo-Impressionism, with the facts of each object drawn from museum collection records.

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Contents

• Before 1874: The Salon, Realism and Manet
• 1874: The First Exhibition
• Modern Paris: Boulevards, Leisure and Labor
• Degas: Movement, Work and the Body
• Women Impressionists
• Monet's Series and the End of the Group

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain