Impressionism Trivia
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50 free Impressionism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Impressionism was named by a critic who meant it as an insult, launched in a photographer's studio, and dismissed as 'wallpaper in its embryonic state'. This quiz covers the movement from the Académie and the Salon that the young painters rebelled against, through Gleyre's studio, the Café Guerbois, the Salon des Refusés of 1863, tin paint tubes and en plein air, to the eight exhibitions of 1874 to 1886 and the Seurat split. Then it turns to the painters and pictures: Monet at Le Havre, Rouen and Giverny, the Water Lilies and the $110 million Grainstacks; Manet's Déjeuner and Olympia; Renoir's dance at the Moulin de la Galette and Boating Party; Degas the reluctant realist; Pissarro from St Thomas; Morisot, Cassatt, Sisley, Caillebotte and Bazille; Durand-Ruel the dealer, and the Orsay, Orangerie and Marmottan museums that hold the work today. Easy questions suit anyone who has stood in front of a haystack; the expert tier asks for critics, cafés and dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the movement, its artists and its paintings, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Claude Monet and on Post-Impressionism.
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Q 01Which imported art form, avidly collected by Monet, inspired the Impressionists' flat colour and off-centre viewpoints?
Japanese woodblock prints
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.
Q 02Which critic coined the term 'Impressionists' in a satirical 1874 review?
Louis Leroy
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.
Q 03Which satirical Paris paper printed the mocking 1874 review that gave Impressionism its name?
Le Charivari
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.
Q 04Where was the First Impressionist Exhibition held in April 1874?
The studio of the photographer Nadar
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.
Q 05Which stockbroker and Sunday painter showed with the Impressionists in the 1880s before sailing for Tahiti?
Paul Gauguin
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.
Q 06Which painter was the only one to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886?
Camille Pissarro
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.
Q 07What French phrase describes the Impressionists' practice of painting outdoors?
En plein air
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.
Q 08Under which academic painter did Monet, Renoir and Sisley meet as students in the early 1860s?
Charles Gleyre
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.
Q 09Which café on the Avenue de Clichy hosted Manet and the future Impressionists' regular evening debates in the 1860s?
Café Guerbois
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.
Q 10Which Manet painting, rejected by the 1863 Salon, shows a nude woman picnicking with clothed men?
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
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.
Q 11Which French head of state ordered the Salon des Refusés so the public could judge the rejected paintings for itself?
Napoleon III
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.
Q 12Which novelist championed Manet in the press in 1866 and defended the much-attacked Olympia in a pamphlet the next year?
Émile Zola
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.
Q 13Which Impressionist rejected the label, preferring 'realist', and belittled painting outdoors?
Q 21Pissarro was born on which Caribbean island, then a Danish colony?
St Thomas
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.
Q 22Which wealthy painter of The Floor Scrapers funded his fellow Impressionists and left his collection of their work to France?
Gustave Caillebotte
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.
Q 23Which American museum owns Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day?
Edgar Degas
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.
Q 14Which friend and fellow student of Monet and Renoir was killed fighting in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870?
Frédéric Bazille
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.
Q 15Which mid-century invention let the Impressionists carry ready-mixed oil colours outdoors without them drying out?
The collapsible tin tube
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.
Q 16Which art dealer championed the Impressionists, staging shows in London and New York?
Paul Durand-Ruel
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.
Q 17Which two Neo-Impressionists' invitation to the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886 split the group?
Paul Signac and Georges Seurat
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.
Q 18Which American painter joined the Impressionist exhibitions in 1879 at Degas's invitation?
Mary Cassatt
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.
Q 19Which Impressionist was married to Manet's brother Eugène?
Berthe Morisot
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.
Q 20Which Impressionist, born in Paris to British parents, painted the Thames at Hampton Court in 1874?
Alfred Sisley
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.
The Art Institute of Chicago
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.
Q 24Which Normandy port, where Monet grew up, is shown in Impression, Sunrise?
Le Havre
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.
Q 25Which Paris museum usually displays Impression, Sunrise?
Musée Marmottan
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.
Q 26In which village did Monet settle from 1883 and build his water-lily pond?
Giverny
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.
Q 27Monet offered his Water Lilies panels to France as a peace memorial the day after which event?
The Armistice of 1918
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.
Q 28Which Paris museum houses Monet's largest Water Lilies murals in a pair of oval rooms?
Musée de l'Orangerie
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.
Q 29Which cathedral did Monet paint some thirty times in 1892–94 under different light?
Rouen
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.
Q 30Which farm-field subject did Monet paint 25 times in 1890–91, one canvas selling for $110.7 million in 2019?
Haystacks
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.