50 Fun Facts About Impressionism

Which imported art form, avidly collected by Monet, inspired the Impressionists' flat colour and off-centre viewpoints?

Japanese woodblock prints poured into Paris after Japan resumed trade with the West in the 1850s; painters borrowed their flat colour and unexpected angles, and the craze was named Japonisme.

Which critic coined the term 'Impressionists' in a satirical 1874 review?

Louis Leroy, writing for a satirical magazine, meant 'Impressionists' as a comic insult drawn from a Monet title; by their third show in 1877 the painters had taken the name as their own.

Which satirical Paris paper printed the mocking 1874 review that gave Impressionism its name?

Le Charivari, a satirical magazine named after an old word for a noisy mock serenade, ran the review as a comic dialogue between two visitors to the show.

Where was the First Impressionist Exhibition held in April 1874?

The studio of the photographer Nadar looked onto the Boulevard des Capucines, and Monet's view of that street, painted from its windows, hung in the show, where a critic jeered at its sketchy strolling figures.

Which stockbroker and Sunday painter showed with the Impressionists in the 1880s before sailing for Tahiti?

Paul Gauguin painted in his spare time while prospering on the Paris stock exchange; the market crash of 1882 pushed him into painting full time, and in 1891 he left his wife and children for Tahiti.

Which painter was the only one to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886?

Camille Pissarro, the oldest of the group, steadied it through its quarrels; the historian John Rewald called him the dean of the Impressionist painters for his wise, kind and warm-hearted nature.

What French phrase describes the Impressionists' practice of painting outdoors?

En plein air means 'in the open air': instead of sketching outside and finishing in the studio, the Impressionists completed whole canvases outdoors to catch the light before it changed.

Under which academic painter did Monet, Renoir and Sisley meet as students in the early 1860s?

Charles Gleyre was a conservative Swiss-born painter, yet his studio offered the rare chance to work from live models and he urged students to study nature, so it drew the future rebels.

Which café on the Avenue de Clichy hosted Manet and the future Impressionists' regular evening debates in the 1860s?

Café Guerbois was where Manet held court on Thursdays from 1866; talk there ran so hot that in 1870 he fought a duel with the critic Duranty, wounded him, and stayed his friend.

Which Manet painting, rejected by the 1863 Salon, shows a nude woman picnicking with clothed men?

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe caused a scandal at the Salon des Refusés: its naked woman was no goddess but a modern Parisian, staring out at the viewer beside two men in everyday dress.

Which French head of state ordered the Salon des Refusés so the public could judge the rejected paintings for itself?

Napoleon III stepped in after the 1863 Salon jury turned away so many entries that the rejected artists protested loudly; he had their works hung in a separate show to quiet them.

Which novelist championed Manet in the press in 1866 and defended the much-attacked Olympia in a pamphlet the next year?

Émile Zola, a boyhood friend of Cézanne who met the painters through him, praised Manet in the newspaper L'Événement and asked readers to judge the bold brushwork, not the subject.

Which Impressionist rejected the label, preferring 'realist', and belittled painting outdoors?

Edgar Degas said 'no art is less spontaneous than mine', calling his pictures the result of reflection and study of the great masters; he barred visitors from his studio and laboured over each canvas.

Which friend and fellow student of Monet and Renoir was killed fighting in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870?

Frédéric Bazille came from a wealthy Montpellier wine family; he stunned his friends by enlisting in a Zouave regiment in August 1870 and was killed that November at Beaune-la-Rolande, aged 28.

Which mid-century invention let the Impressionists carry ready-mixed oil colours outdoors without them drying out?

The collapsible tin tube was patented in 1841 by the American painter John Goffe Rand; before it, artists ground their own pigments and kept the paint in animal bladders, a slow and messy business.

Which art dealer championed the Impressionists, staging shows in London and New York?

Paul Durand-Ruel bought their work when few would and nearly bankrupted himself twice; he later said the buyers at his 1886 exhibitions in America had saved him from ruin.

Which two Neo-Impressionists' invitation to the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886 split the group?

Paul Signac and Georges Seurat built pictures from small dots of pure colour; Pissarro was so taken with the method that he painted that way himself for a few years.

Which American painter joined the Impressionist exhibitions in 1879 at Degas's invitation?

Mary Cassatt, the only American to exhibit with the group, later persuaded her friends the Havemeyers, a sugar-refining family, to buy Impressionist pictures, steering the art towards US collections.

Which Impressionist was married to Manet's brother Eugène?

Berthe Morisot married Eugène Manet in December 1874, months after showing at the first Impressionist exhibition; his brother Édouard had painted her several times, once with a bouquet of violets.

Which Impressionist, born in Paris to British parents, painted the Thames at Hampton Court in 1874?

Alfred Sisley, nicknamed the English Impressionist, rarely left France yet died a British citizen: he applied for French nationality twice near the end of his life and never got it.

Pissarro was born on which Caribbean island, then a Danish colony?

St Thomas, now in the US Virgin Islands, was where his parents kept a shop; in his early twenties he defied his father's wish that he join the business and sailed to Venezuela to draw and paint for two years.

Which wealthy painter of The Floor Scrapers funded his fellow Impressionists and left his collection of their work to France?

Gustave Caillebotte's bequest embarrassed officials who still distrusted the new painting: after a long, heated negotiation the state accepted only part of the collection he left it.

Which American museum owns Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day?

The Art Institute of Chicago bought the huge canvas in 1964, and the purchase helped pull its painter out of obscurity: wider interest in his work followed in the 1970s.

Which Normandy port, where Monet grew up, is shown in Impression, Sunrise?

Le Havre: Monet painted its outer harbour at dawn from the window of his hotel room during a stay in 1872, working fast to catch the mist and the low sun before the light changed.

Which Paris museum usually displays Impression, Sunrise?

Musée Marmottan was given the painting by the daughter of Georges de Bellio, a doctor who had been among the first to back and collect the young Impressionists.

In which village did Monet settle from 1883 and build his water-lily pond?

Giverny: Monet rented a house there in 1883 and bought it in 1890 once his pictures were selling; the water garden he then made fed the last three decades of his painting.

Monet offered his Water Lilies panels to France as a peace memorial the day after which event?

The Armistice of 1918 was a day old when Monet offered the state his panels as a monument to peace; his friend the statesman Georges Clemenceau had pressed him to paint something to lift the country.

Which Paris museum houses Monet's largest Water Lilies murals in a pair of oval rooms?

Musée de l'Orangerie hung the panels in 1927, a few months after Monet died; he had planned the two oval rooms himself so the water would surround the viewer like a wave with no horizon or shore.

Which cathedral did Monet paint some thirty times in 1892–94 under different light?

Rouen Cathedral's façade faced the rooms Monet took across the street as a makeshift studio, so he could paint the same stone front as the hours passed.

Which farm-field subject did Monet paint 25 times in 1890–91, one canvas selling for $110.7 million in 2019?

Haystacks, the stacked wheat in a neighbour's field, let Monet follow the changing light through the seasons; the 2019 sale made one the first Impressionist painting to pass $100 million at auction.

What eye condition affected Monet's late work?

Cataracts left Monet nearly blind in both eyes and muddied his sense of colour; he put off an operation for about a decade before finally agreeing to surgery in 1923.

Which Renoir painting depicts a Sunday afternoon dance in Montmartre?

Painted in 1876, it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.

Which American museum bought Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party in 1923?

The Phillips Collection, Washington, got it when Duncan Phillips wrote home from Paris that his gallery would own 'one of the greatest paintings in the world', sure it would win more support than everything else he had.

Which of Renoir's sons became a celebrated filmmaker?

Jean Renoir directed La Grande Illusion and The Rules of the Game; he appears as a child in his father's paintings and later wrote the memoir Renoir, My Father.

Which illness crippled Renoir's hands in his last two decades, though he kept painting?

Rheumatoid arthritis put Renoir in a wheelchair with bandaged hands, yet he painted on at Cagnes-sur-Mer and even made sculpture by directing a young assistant who worked the clay.

Which Renaissance painting did Manet paraphrase for the pose of Olympia?

Titian's Venus of Urbino has a small dog asleep at her feet; in its place Manet painted a cat with its back arched, and he turned the goddess into a modern Parisian who stares straight back.

Who modelled for both Manet's Olympia and the nude in his 1863 picnic painting?

Victorine Meurent became a painter herself, and in 1876 the Paris Salon accepted her work in a year when its jury turned Manet's down.

What was Manet's last major work, hung at the Salon of 1882?

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère was painted entirely in Manet's studio, where a barmaid from the music hall named Suzon came to pose; he finished it a year before he died.

What was the Musée d'Orsay before it became a museum in 1986?

A railway station: the Gare d'Orsay opened for the 1900 World's Fair, lost its long-distance trains in 1939 and sat half-used for decades before the 1977 decision to turn it into a museum.

Which relative of Monet left more than a hundred of the painter's canvases to a Paris museum in 1966?

His younger son, Michel, was the painter's last direct heir: childless, he decided against leaving the pictures to the state, and when he died in 1966 they went to the museum he had chosen instead.

Which critic coined the term 'Post-Impressionism' for a London exhibition he organised in 1910?

Roger Fry needed a name for the painters in 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists' at London's Grafton Galleries and said he chose the vaguest and most non-committal one: it only placed them after the Impressionists.

Which Post-Impressionist are Picasso and Matisse both said to have called 'the father of us all'?

Paul Cézanne showed with the Impressionists but wanted to make of their style something solid and enduring, like the art of the museums; Picasso took him as a starting point for Cubism.

Which older painter talked the teenage Monet into painting outdoors and later joined the 1874 Impressionist show?

Eugène Boudin noticed the teenage Monet through the caricatures he had on display and took him out to paint from nature, something Monet did reluctantly at first.

Which poet of L'Après-midi d'un faune, a friend of Manet, defended the Impressionists in an 1876 essay?

Stéphane Mallarmé wrote that an Impressionist subject 'palpitates with movement, light, and life'; Manet painted his portrait that year and had illustrated his translation of Poe's The Raven.

Which group of Italian painters worked outdoors in Tuscany from the 1850s, shortly before the French Impressionists?

The Macchiaioli gathered to argue at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence and broke with the academies to paint in natural light across Tuscany, at their peak between 1850 and 1870.

Which French composer's shimmering music was labelled 'Impressionist' after the painters, a term he disliked?

Claude Debussy built pieces from short waves of sound much as the painters used quick strokes of colour, but he scorned the tag, writing in 1908 that only imbeciles called his music impressionism.

Which London landmark did Monet paint again and again, in fog and at sunset, from a terrace across the Thames?

The Houses of Parliament drew Monet across the river in the evenings to catch the sun sinking through the fog; with dozens of canvases on the go, he ended up finishing the series back home in France.

At which fashionable bathing spot on the Seine did Monet and Renoir paint side by side in 1869?

La Grenouillère saw the two friends paint the same scenes from the same spot, and several pairs of their pictures survive; those weeks spent chasing light on water have been called a key moment in the birth of Impressionism.

Which colour did most Impressionists banish from their palettes, though Manet went on using it freely?

Black is missing from real shadows, they argued: a shadow takes the complementary colour of the light, so yellow sun throws violet shade, and dark tones were mixed from pairs of opposites.

Which Paris rail terminus, full of locomotive steam, did Monet paint a dozen times in early 1877?

Gare Saint-Lazare was the terminus for trains to Normandy, where Monet grew up; he got permission to set up his easel inside and painted its smoke and iron from the concourse and beside the tracks.