Impressionism

Light in a single moment, captured outdoors with quick brushstrokes.

In 1874 a group of artists rejected by the Salon organized their own exhibition in Paris. A critic mocked Monet’s Impression, Sunrise and called them Impressionists. The name stuck.

The Impressionists painted outdoors, en plein air, using paint in tubes, which had been invented in the 1840s. They wanted to capture how light and weather change a subject from minute to minute, and they placed colors side by side in short strokes instead of mixing them.

Their subject was modern life: cafés, railway stations, ballet and Sunday outings. Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Morisot and Cassatt formed the core of the group. Many Nordic artists also took up plein-air painting in France.