Between 1853 and 1870 under Emperor Napoleon III, Paris saw a radical transformation from medieval city to modern metropolis. This renovation saw old buildings razed and narrow streets erased in favor of wide boulevards and more open space for a cleaner and safer city.
Just as the city of Paris—not to mention society itself—was transforming radically in the latter part of the 19th century, so too were the styles and subjects of some of the painters of the time. Bucking academic conventions, these artists, eventually called Impressionists, celebrated the transient effects of light and movement in their landscapes and a changing society in their scenes of daily life. Marked by contemporary subject matter and loose brushwork, these works rejected the traditional forms and techniques favored by the official annual Paris Salon.
Further distancing their work from the academy were these artists’ embrace of newly developed synthetic pigments that created more vibrant color palettes, particularly shades of blue, green, and yellow. Forgoing thick layers of varnish previously used by the Impressionists’ predecessors also added to the modernity of their work.
Today, of course, we recognize the enormous impact of the Impressionists, who forever changed the course of Western art and whose output continues to draw visitors to museums around the world. Below is a look at some of the notable works that embody the historical significance and spirit of the movement.
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Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869
Image Credit: Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Five years before Impressionism’s official debut, this painting of visitors to a boating and bathing resort on the Seine River near Paris reveals the seeds of the movement. Monet created this work alongside his friend and fellow painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who produced a similar canvas. Working together en plein air, the pair presented a view of Paris’s bourgeoisie at play.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillière, 1869
Image Credit: Collection of the Nationalmuseum Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden Renoir’s iteration of the same scene is similar but offers a slightly different perspective. Where Monet seems intent on capturing the effects of sunlight on water, Renoir appears more focused on the hustle and bustle of life on the waterside.
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Alfred Sisley, La Seine à Port Marly, 1875
Image Credit: Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Paris to wealthy British expats, Sisley began painting as an amateur, later—after his family lost their money—taking it up full time. In this piece, rather than showing the Seine as a weekend destination for Parisians, he depicts it populated by laborers during a workday. In its time, the work was described by critic Ernest Chesneau as having “surpassed any work of the past or present in its ability to invoke the physical sensation of ‘plein air’ atmosphere.”
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Claude Monet, Les déchargeurs de charbon, 1875
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Like Sisley in the painting above, but more directly, Monet here alludes to changes wrought by the industrial revolution. We see the Seine packed with barges, from which workers are busy unloading coal, as the factories that burn that coal belch smoke in the distance. The scene is a reminder that many of the atmospheric effects that dazzled Monet and his compatriots were the products of pollution.
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Édouard Manet, Le chemin de fer, 1873
Image Credit: Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Though he had much in common with the Impressionists, Manet chose not to show his work with theirs. Instead he submitted his paintings to the official Salon for public recognition. Like those of other Impressionist artists, many of his paintings focus on social dynamics, as does this canvas. A woman in dark blue facing the viewer and a young girl with her back turned are situated in front of the iron fence of a railyard. The relationship between them is unknown but palpably distant despite their proximity—a metaphor for destabilized social relations in a rapidly changing city.
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Eva Gonzalès, Une loge aux Italiens, 1874
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris A student of Manet, Gonzalès was eager, like her teacher, to exhibit her work at the Salon rather than with the Impressionist group. But she was still engaged by the popular Impressionist theme of the theater. Here, she depicts a woman looking out from a private theater box while her male companion gazes over her head at something beyond the frame (the models were the artist’s husband, Henri Guérard, and her sister Jeanne Gonzalès). As in the painting by Manet above, the relationship between the two subjects is purposely enigmatic. Several details in the painting—the woman’s bracelet, the flower in her hair, a bouquet of flowers—appear to recall Manet’s Olympia (1863).
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Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878
Image Credit: Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston In this picture, a self-assured female operagoer watches the performance through binoculars. Unbeknownst to her, however, she is herself an object of scrutiny by a man in a box across from hers. Here, Cassatt slyly uses their two gazes to comment on the position of women in 19th-century Parisian society. An American expat who made her home in Paris, Cassatt was one of just three women to exhibit her work with the Impressionists.
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Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873–74
Image Credit: Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Monet painted this view from the studio window of photographer Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (known professionally as Nadar), where the first Impressionist exhibition would be held in the spring of 1874. From his perch high above the street, Monet captured a rapidly modernizing Paris, staccato brushstrokes suggesting the accelerated pace of daily life in the city.
Critic Ernest Chesneau summed up the popular sentiment regarding the artist’s work at the time: “At a distance, one hails a masterpiece in this stream of life. . . . But come closer, and it all vanishes. There remains only an indecipherable chaos of palette scrapings. Obviously, this is not the last word in art, nor even of this art. It is necessary to go on and transform the sketch into a finished work. But what a bugle call for those who listen carefully, how it resounds far into the future!”
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Nadar, Façade de l’atelier de Nadar, 35, Boulevard des Capucines, c. 1861
Image Credit: Collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. This photograph of the exterior of Nadar’s studio shows the location of the first exhibition of the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs—later known as the Impressionists—in 1874. Initially a caricaturist, Nadar (born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) began taking photographs in 1853 and opened a portrait studio the following year. The new medium of photography developed alongside of and greatly influenced the Impressionists. A friendship with Manet led Nadar to offer to rent them his former studio for their debut.
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Camille Pissarro, Gelée blanche, 1873
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. A key contributor to Impressionism and a mentor of younger Impressionist artists, Pissarro was fascinated with rural life. In this canvas, a man carrying a load of wood trudges over a frost-covered field criss-crossed by the shadows of surrounding trees. Initially dubbed a “grave error” by critics of the day, this piece is now understood as a brilliant study of light and atmosphere.
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Gustave Caillebotte, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie, 1877
Image Credit: Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Caillebotte’s best-known work, this painting memorializes the changing urban landscape of Paris at the end of the 1900s. Caillebotte grew up in a district near the one depicted, when the area was a sparsely settled hill with narrow streets; by the 1870s, the buildings had been torn down and the streets relaid. Completing the area’s transformation are the stylish men and women—members of a greatly expanded bourgeoisie social class—seen strolling under their umbrellas. The painting was well received at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877, which was organized by Caillebotte himself.
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Edgar Degas, Femmes à la terrasse d'un café le soir, 1877
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. In this pastel over monotype, Degas records the evening scene at a busy Parisian café. Unlike many of his peers, who often painted outdoors, Degas preferred to render social spaces and the interactions between the people within. Here he focuses on female patrons at the café’s outdoor tables and the bustling nightlife behind them.
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Berthe Morisot, Femme à sa toilette, 1875
Image Credit: Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the few women in the Impressionist movement, Morisot here provides an intimate look at a woman at her toilette. Emphasizing the privacy of the moment, Morisot’s subject is decorously turned away from the viewer. (Morisot was not unfamiliar with clever angles, not only as a painter but as a model: she frequently posed for Manet and married his younger brother, Eugène.) The painting was shown to great acclaim at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880.
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Édouard Manet, Un bar aux Folies Bergère, 1881–82
Image Credit: Collection of the Courtauld Gallery, London. Considered the last of Manet’s major works, this painting of a barmaid at a popular music hall shows her surrounded by an array of consumables, including a bowl of oranges (according to some scholars, the latter are Manet’s coded signal that she may also be a sex worker). Reflected in a mirror behind her, one can see a fashionable crowd gathered on a balcony, as well as a man in a top hat standing at the bar. While in the reflection she appears to be engaging with her customer, seen from the front she appears withdrawn, her expression enigmatic.
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Edgar Degas, Dans un café, 1875–76
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. A sullen-looking couple are seated next to each other at a café table, full glasses in front of them. The woman looks down, her eyes unfocused, and the man, his gaze averted from her, stares into space. They may be drunk. Unlike Degas’s livelier painting of modern life above, this one seems to offer a commentary on its alienation. So realistic was this work that it damaged the reputations of the actress and the artist who posed for it; Degas was forced to issue a public statement saying that they were not alcoholics.
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Paul Cézanne, La Maison du pendu Auvers-sur-Oise, 1873
Image Credit: Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Though Cézanne is largely understood to be post–Impressionist, he exhibited twice with the Impressionist group and maintained close friendships with Pissarro, Monet, and Renoir. This painting, a study of light on the rooftops of Auvers-sur-Oise, evinces his debt to those artists.
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Georges Seurat, Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, 1884–86
Image Credit: Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ushering in the era of neo–Impressionism, this painting by Seurat was exhibited at the last Impressionist exhibition. The crowded park scene was executed using a technique known as pointillism, at which Seurat excelled. Based on color theory and scientific research on optics, pointillism was based on the fact that small dots of pure color painted in close proximity to one another will appear from a distance as a single shade.
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Claude Monet, Nénuphars et Pont japonais, 1899
Image Credit: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Due to his commercial success as a painter, Monet was able to move his family to the rural French community of Giverny and eventually purchase the property. There, he lined the walls with Japanese prints and cultivated an inspired garden, which he frequently used as a subject. This painting of an arched footbridge and waterlilies is one of 12 he made in 1899 of the same view.