Impressionists (Tate Introductions)

Carol Jacobi

Softcover | 16.83 x 0.64 x 20.96 cm | 80 pp

Tate Publishing | 2017 | 9781849765299 

This refreshingly accessible introduction to the lives and work of some of the best-known and best-loved impressionists features artworks by Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Morisot among many others.

In April 1874, the French satirical magazine Le Charivari ran a mocking headline: 'Exhibition of the Impressionists'. The critic, Louis Leroy, was making fun of a new group, self-styled as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, and especially of a sketchy painting by Claude Monet entitled Impression, Sunrise (1872). He described a visitor bewildered by the paintings, wiping his spectacles, assuming them smudged, and exclaiming "What on earth is that?" Unknown to Leroy, his intended insult would be embraced to describe one of the most radical and influential movements of nineteenth-century art.

The impressionists, as they came to be known, rejected established styles and traditional subject matter, preferring to depict everyday scenes of modern life through the fleeting, light-dappled impressions of the senses.