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One of the most famous Impressionists, Claude Monet (1840-1926) gave a name to one of art's most beloved movements. It was Monet's "Impression Sunrise" painting at the 1874 Salon des Refuses that coined the artistic movement's moniker, Impressionism. However, it was a sarcastic critic (Louis Leroy) who labeled Monet and his colleagues unfavorably as Impressionists, and compared the painting by Monet to wallpaper, noting "wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished." Neither Monet nor Leroy could have imagined in 1874 just what eternal value this group was creating by giving birth to a new way of painting that would be beloved by so many, from the late 1800s unti the present day.

BACKGROUND

Claude Monet didn't begin his artistic life as an Impressionist. Born to an affluent family in the northern French city of Le Havre, Monet's interest in art began at an early age, where he was known for drawing caricatures of local personalities. As most artists of the time, he entered a private art school, studying under an Academy master, Charles Gleyre, along with fellow students August Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley, where he learned traditional painting techniques.

Aware of artistic developments in naturalism and realism, Claude Monet was drawn to the works of the avant garde, and he admired painters like Jean-Baptiste Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Edouard Manet. In the 1860s, Monet and other artists from the Atelier Gleyre began experimenting with a new, more spontaneous style of painting that attempted to capture the fleeting, temporal moment, instead of imitating reality.

BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

This new style of painting did not sit well with the more traditional masters of art. The paintings of Claude Monet and his fellow experimenters were rejected by the Salon, the official exhibition of the French Academy of Art in Paris. The painters responded to this rejection by staging their own show in 1874, held in the studio of a photographer, Nadar, and dubbed the Salon des Refuses. The group went on to stage seven more exhibitions of their joint work. Gradually, their ideas began to gain acceptance, and the artists themselves each went their own way.

IMPRESSIONISTIC STYLE

Just why was Impressionism so scandalous? In a word, the painting style was revolutionary for the time. Impressionists broke with the realism tradition by beginning to visualize the physical world in a new way. New sensitivity was given to the fleeting, mobile quality of time. It rejected the

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