Impressionism : Art Gallery / John Russell Taylor

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Impressionism was a late-19th-century art movement that marked the first major break from traditional academic painting. Emerging in France in the 1860s–1870s, Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot focused on capturing fleeting moments of modern life, especially the effects of light, color, and atmosphere. Instead of detailed realism, they used loose brushwork, bright unmixed colors, and visible strokes, often painting outdoors (en plein air). Impressionism rejected historical and mythological subjects in favor of everyday scenes—city streets, cafés, landscapes, and leisure activities. By emphasizing subjective visual perception over precise representation, Impressionism challenged academic rules and laid the foundation for later modern art movements such as Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.