"Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir
that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing
flesh with those purplish-green stains."

-- ALBERT WOLFF, 1876 ART CRITIC

The Monsieur Renoir that Albert Wolff refers to is none other than Pierre Renoir, the now famous French Impressionist artist. An art movement and style of painting, Impressionism began in France during the 1860s and, as the quote indicates, it was not well received initially. Impressionists were a group of radical painters who departed from traditional art and stylized various other methods of painting. One such technique involved using loose brushwork to "produce the illusion of the artist's spontaneous recording of natural light."

One art history source states that Impressionism is more a state of mind than an actual technique, because artists do not depend on the division of color. Impressionists often begin with sketches and many work outdoors (en plein air) to capture the effects of the constantly changing atmosphere and light. Impressionist painters do not concern themselves so much with individual details as they do the impact of light on the surface. Their technique involves placing the brush strokes on the canvas and allowing the viewer's eye to do the mixing of colors.

Another art critic, Louis Leroy, first coined the term impressionist, intending it to be a very derogatory comment. Upon viewing a painting by Claude Monet entitled, "Impression: Sunrise," Leroy dubbed Monet's work as "impressionist" to insult his style. However, Monet's work was well received by many others, and the term became a positive name to describe an "experience arising from a fleeting impression, rather than laborious details."

The principles of the Impressionist movement were Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Edgar Degas, 1834-1917) Claude Monet (1840-1926), Renoir (1841-1919), and the early work of Paul Cézanne (1939-1906). Cézanne's later work transcends into the Post-Impressionism movement. A very diverse group, their backgrounds, beliefs and painting styles varied greatly from one another. What these men shared in common, however, was a "desire to create a fresh way of looking at things and a new kind of painting that reflected a modern way of life." Paris, home to the Impressionists, was one of their favorite subjects.