Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, … See more

Radicals in their time, the early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following th… See more

In the middle of the 19th century—a time of rapid industrialization and unsettling social change in France, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris and waged war—the Académie des Beaux-Arts dominated French art. The Académie … See more

French painters who prepared the way for Impressionism include the Romantic colourist Eugène Delacroix; the leader of the realists, Gustave Courbet; and painters of the Barbizon school such as Théodore Rousseau. … See more