Impressionism

A group of Paris-based painters — Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cassatt, and others — began exhibiting together in 1874 after the official Salon repeatedly rejected their work. Critic Louis Leroy mocked Monet's Impression, Sunrise as an unfinished 'impression' rather than a painting; the group adopted the insult as their name.

Instead of mixing colors on a palette, Impressionists often applied unmixed pigments in short strokes side by side, letting the eye blend them — a technique suited to painting outdoors (en plein air) as light and weather changed minute to minute. Subjects shifted from history and mythology to modern leisure: train stations, cafés, gardens, boating parties, and ballet rehearsals.

Mary Cassatt, an American living in Paris, was invited to join the group by Edgar Degas and exhibited with them from 1879, bringing a distinct focus on domestic scenes of women and children. By the 1880s the original group had splintered, but their emphasis on light, color, and direct observation reshaped the direction of Western painting.