Impressionism - Beauty at a Glance
On the canvas of our hearts they painted what we all see but rarely notice—beauty as it happens in motion, fleeting and unforgettable.
This is the 150th anniversary of Impressionism.
Long before selfies, they taught us how to truly capture a moment—through feeling, not just form.
Before they were posters in your first apartment, these were images of postwar life. Monet, Degas, Renoir and the rest had just lived through France’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. They had lost friends. The painter Frédéric Bazille, with whom the young Monet shared a studio, died on the front lines.
If Impressionism has a single word it is Beautiful. They captured beauty as the eye actually sees it - in impressions of shape, light, colour, and movement.
The first Impressionist exhibition took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874, in the studio of the photographer Nadar at 35 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. This groundbreaking event was organized by a group of artists who had grown frustrated with the rigid standards of the official Salon. It featured works by painters such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot, among others. Monet's Impression, Sunrise was one of the key pieces exhibited, and it was this painting that led critics to label the movement "Impressionism" in a mocking tone—though the name ultimately stuck.
That first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874 was hardly a resounding success. Of the 3,500 tickets sold, many went to those who came merely to sneer. For context, that same year’s Salon drew 400,000 attendees, a comparison that speaks to the establishment’s power. The critics, too, were brutal. One famously mocked Monet’s Impression, Sunrise—the painting that gave the movement its name—as unfinished, lacking in composition and form. To them, this wasn't art. It was an affront.
But others saw something vital. Camille Pissarro, another key figure in the group, wrote of his fellow painters as "lovers of nature, the open air, the different impressions that we experience.” In those shimmering colors and loose brushstrokes, there was a truth that escaped the rigid confines of the Academy. What the Impressionists captured wasn’t just a moment frozen in time—it was how it felt to stand in that moment. How it felt to see.
At the time, painting was becoming increasingly photographic, just as photography itself became commercial. The Academy valued precision and clarity—sharpness, perfected over hundreds of years, that mimicked the new camera’s eye. But the human eye doesn’t see that way. Life is full of blur. Objects drift in and out of focus. We are aware of light and shade more than we are of every last detail. Even in cinema, filmmakers use 24 frames per second to mimic the blur of our sight, and shallow depth-of-field lenses to replicate the way we focus on what’s near while the rest softens in the distance. Infinite, crystal-clear focus can be cold, alienating - the VHS tape of art. The Impressionists rebelled against this rigidity, reminding us that we see the world in softer, more fluid terms.
The criticism that Impressionism is "too pretty," too popular, too comforting, is a fringe one, often voiced by those who view popularity as a mark of compromise. Dismissing Monet or Renoir as the artistic equivalent of a pumpkin spice latte—sugary, superficial—is to miss the deeper point. Their work isn't just pleasing; it's about the authentic experience of seeing. It captures the beauty that our senses perceive before our minds have time to judge.
And beauty, as they painted it, has always been more than decoration. It is, in many ways, the greatest creator of wealth in all of history. In the financial sense, and in the sense of human flourishing. Beauty inspires, it builds, it sustains. The Impressionists painted a kind of visual poetry, showing us the world as we wish to see it: vibrant, full of light, and deeply alive. In their hands, beauty becomes a form of truth—one that nourishes the soul, even as the world around us hardens.
Today, we live in a time of paradox. As the comedian Louis CK puts it, “Everything’s amazing, and nobody’s happy.” Technology has given us more than we ever dreamed possible, yet a certain malaise seems to have settled in. The root of this is our culture's rejection of beauty in favor of speed, efficiency, precision, and endless consumption. We have traded wonder for functionality, forgetting that the heart yearns for beauty above all else.
In its 150th year, Impressionism still offers us a glimpse of that beauty—one that, despite our modern discontent, still resonates. The movement’s endurance isn't just about aesthetics. It’s about its deep, almost instinctual appeal to the way we experience the world and beauty. The way we see the shimmer of light on water or the golden haze of the setting sun. The way we feel when we pause to take in the world, even for just a moment, with all its beauty, before it passes us by.
The truth is, beauty remains the greatest wealth humanity can possess. And in its own quiet way, Impressionism reminds us that our experience of it is fleeting, but powerful. It teaches us to see—and in seeing, to feel.