The Impressionist movement developed in Paris in the 1860s in response to the conservative Salon de Paris. Artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley rejected the Salon's strict rules and instead aimed to capture fleeting moments and sensory impressions of light through loose brushwork and painting outdoors. This was inspired by early innovators like Manet, whose 1863 painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe scandalized viewers with its casual portrayal of nude women but influenced later Impressionists. The movement spread their techniques of portraying transient effects of light and atmosphere through Europe and the United States.

1. IMPRESSIONISTIC PERIOD
1863-1900

2. Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly
modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the
1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and
eventually the United States. Its originators were artists
who rejected the official, government-sanctioned
exhibitions, or salons(Salon de Paris and Salon de Refuses)
, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art
institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail
to which most artists of their day aspired.
Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory
effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the
eye in a fleeting instant. To achieve this effect, many
Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the
streets and countryside, painting en plein air.
Synopsis

3. The Impressionist Exhibitions and the
Painting Revolution
 In 1863, at the official salon (Salon de Paris), exhibits the all-
important event of the art world, a large number of artists were
not allowed to participate, leading to public outcry .
 The same year, the Salon de Refusés was formed in
response to allow the exhibition of works by artists who had
previously been refused entrance to the official salon. Some of
the exhibitors were Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, and the
early iconoclast Édouard Manet.
 Édouard Manet was among the first and most important
innovators to emerge in the public exhibition scene in Paris,
the 1863 exhibition caused a scandal, due largely to the
unconventional themes and styles of works such as Manet's Le
déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863), which featured clothed men and
nude women enjoying an afternoon picnic.

4. Le déjeuner sur l'herbe
(Luncheon on the Grass)
• Painted by EDOUARD MANET,
when the work was presented
at the 1863 Salon des Refuses
it caused an uproar due to
both its aesthetic rendering
and its "racy" content. The
painting, which depicts the
picnic of two fully clothed men
and two nude women, defies
the tradition of the idealized
female subject of Neo-
Classicism in the positioning of
the woman on the left who
gazes frankly out at the
viewer- she is confrontational,
rather than passive.

5. Paris Street, Rainy
Day, 1877, Gustave
Caillebotte
L'Absinthe, 1876,
Edgar Degas
In a Park, 1874,
Berthe Morisot
Fog, Voisins, 1874

6. The Boulevard
Montmartre,
Afternoon, 1897
Girl with a Hoop,
1885, Pierre-
Auguste Renoir
At the Opera,
1880, Mary
Vetheuil in the
Fog, 1879, Claude
Monet

7. Alfred Sisley
Fog, Voisins, 1874
Sisley focused almost
expressly on representations
of the atmosphere while
diminishing the importance
of the human figure, if they
appeared at all. Fog, Voisins
demonstrates this general
preoccupation with the
visual perception of the
natural world through the
application of rough, clearly
visible brushstrokes and the
blurry, almost ethereal
rendering of color and form.
Here, a woman, serenely
picking flowers, is almost
entirely obscured within the
dense fog that eclipses the
pastoral scene. Like much of
Sisley's work, the protagonist
of the painting is nature and
the visual reception of it.