Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Impression, Sunrise, an 1872 Claude Monet oil on canvas painting now housed at Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. This painting became the source of the movement's name after Louis Leroy's 1874 article, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", satirically implied that the painting was, at most, a sketch.
J. M. W. Turner's atmospheric work was influential on the birth of Impressionism, here The Fighting Temeraire (1839)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette), 1876, Musée d'Orsay, one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces.
Édouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy.
Jacques-Louis David, The Coronation of Napoleon, (1806), Musée du Louvre, Neoclassicism
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People 1830, Romanticism
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Savage State, 1836, Hudson River School
Gustave Courbet, Stone-Breakers, 1849, Realist School