Impressionism: Origins, Practice, Reception (World of Art)

The enormous popularity of Impressionist painting today belies what the group of painters dubbed Impressionists stood for. During the 1870s and 1880s, a loose group of French artists, including Pissarro, Monet and Renoir, adopted a style of painting and subject matter that challenged the canonical art promoted by the French Academy and the Salons. The revolutionary nature of Impressionism emerged from anarchism and political radicalism, from a belief in science and individualism, creating a view of art true to modern life and to immediate visual perception.