Barbizon School
The Barbizon School was a loose circle of nineteenth-century French painters who studied forests, fields, and rural life directly from nature.
Painting Movement
Impressionism
Impressionism was a French painting movement that brought changing daylight, visible brushstrokes, and scenes of everyday life to the foreground.
Impressionism quick facts
Review Impressionism’s origins, methods, subjects, and early exhibitions, including the 1874 show that gave the movement its name and public identity.
| Origin | France, especially Paris and its surroundings |
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| Approximate period | 1860s–1880s |
| Classification | A French painting movement associated with independent group exhibitions, not a single formal institution. |
| Historical context | Changing city life and leisure gave artists new subjects as independent exhibitions provided a new venue. Critics derived the movement’s name from Monet’s Impression, Sunrise; the artists began exhibiting in Paris in 1874 and held eight group exhibitions through 1886. |
| Common subjects | Landscapes, leisure, city life, and scenes of modern France |
| Defining characteristics | Visible brushstrokes, shifting light, bright color, and immediate observation |
| Paint types | Primarily oil paint for canvases; watercolor and gouache also appear in works on paper. |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas for many paintings and paper for watercolors, gouache, and studies. |
| Painting methods | Many artists observed subjects outdoors, using rapid, broken brushwork before refining or completing paintings in the studio. |
| Famous painters | Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir |
| Representative works | Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère (1869) and Mary Cassatt's Portrait of the Artist (1878) |
Sources: The National Gallery, National Gallery of Art, MoMA, The National Gallery: Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère, and The Met: Cassatt's Portrait of the Artist.
Paint types in Impressionism
Impressionists are best known for oil canvases, but artists including Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt also used watercolor and gouache on paper.
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Oil paint
Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted Bathers at La Grenouillère side by side in 1869, working quickly to capture changing light and reflections on the water. Monet's broad strokes preserve the scene's transient effect rather than rendering every detail. Portable paint tubes helped make outdoor oil painting practical.
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Watercolor paint
Berthe Morisot's Girl Seated (1894) is watercolor over traces of graphite on Japanese paper. The NGA records graphite beneath the wash, showing her use of watercolor and drawing together in a small work on paper, alongside the oils associated with Impressionism.
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Gouache paint
Mary Cassatt's Portrait of the Artist (1878) combines watercolor and gouache on paper. The Met records both paints in the same work, documenting an Impressionist's use of translucent and opaque water-based color in a compact portrait, distinct from her oil canvases.
Sources: The National Gallery on Monet's oil painting, National Gallery of Art on portable paint tubes and outdoor painting, National Gallery of Art on Morisot's watercolor study, and The Met on Cassatt's watercolor and gouache.
Famous painters from Impressionism
Monet's changing landscapes, Renoir's portraits and gatherings, and Degas's studies of movement reveal distinct approaches to Impressionist painting.
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Claude Monet
Monet's Impression, Sunrise uses loose strokes and a limited range of color to record harbor light as a passing visual effect. He returned to subjects such as haystacks and Rouen Cathedral in repeated series, testing how weather and time changed what the eye could see.
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Edgar Degas
Degas observed dancers rehearsing, bathing, and waiting backstage, often framing them from unusual angles rather than arranging a formal stage scene. His association with the Impressionists reflects a shared interest in modern life, though his carefully planned drawings and indoor subjects differed from outdoor landscape painting.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party gathers friends on a terrace, using warm color and loose brushwork to suggest conversation and sunlight. His Impressionist scenes of leisure and social life show how fleeting effects of light could animate a carefully composed group.
Sources: The National Gallery; National Gallery of Art; MoMA; The National Gallery: Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère; The Met: Cassatt's Portrait of the Artist.
Related painting movements
Barbizon and Realist painting helped prepare Impressionism, whose attention to light later informed Post-Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist experiments.
Realism
Realism emerged in nineteenth-century France, depicting ordinary people, rural labor, and contemporary life without idealization or heroic subjects.
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism describes several distinct approaches to painting after Impressionism, from expressive color to symbolism and structured form.
Neo-Impressionism
Neo-Impressionism emerged in France in the 1880s as painters separated colors into measured strokes or dots, guided by theories of light and color.