Despite its status as a ground-breaking movement, Impressionism can trace its origins to earlier movements such as Naturalism and Realism, which were already questioning conventional views of aesthetic beauty.
The French were governed by a repressive regime, and the majority of the citizens were impoverished. Rather than portraying this, artists of the time focused on idealistic nudity, and historical and mythological storytelling.
They hosted the first of a number of shows in photographer Felix Nadar’s studio in 1874. They didn’t start calling themselves The Impressionists until the third show in 1877.
The movement was named after Louis Leroy, who used the title of Claude Monet’s work Impression, Sunrise (1873) in his scathing criticism of the inaugural Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
Urban subjects are portrayed in the works of Gustave Caillebotte, a latter advocate of the Impressionist style who concentrated on panoramic vistas of cities and the psychology of their inhabitants.
Photography enabled the preservation of all types of individuals, settings, architecture, and landscapes in visual form, even what those forms looked like in motion.
Monet’s outdoor painting style was widely used by French Impressionist artists. This allowed them to capture sunshine and the progression of time, two essential themes of the movement.