How Art Styles Got Their Names - Impressionism

From Insults to Popular Acclaim

Feb 9, 2010
Helle Hermyan

The Painting That Gave Impressionism Its Name - Luestling

Like several other art styles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, impressionism was baptised by the press. And originally the name was - an insult.

Journalists of the 19th century, especially French ones, prided themselves on their sharp tongue (accompanied or not by an equally sharp wit). Louis Leroy was one of them. His wit may have been sharp or not, but he was probably quite happy with his own bon mot when he derided a group of painters exhibiting “blurry” pictures as – impressionists.

And all because of this painting: Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872.

In truth, the painting was only responsible for providing the term. It wasn't singled out for its qualities (or lack thereof): no, Leroy hated all of them equally.

"Palette-scrapings placed uniformly on a dirty canvas"

And so, considering the circumstances, we happen to have the exact date of birth of the term: 25 April 1874. On that day the article, titled “The Exhibition of the Impressionists”, was published in Le Charivari, the popular Parisian magazine Leroy contributed to.

Clearly the “impressionists” read the magazine too, for they quickly adopted Leroy's insult and started using it themselves. They loved it.

Or so the story goes.

Four days after Leroy's article, on April 29, 1874, and apparently unaware of Leroy's article (or just refusing to acknowledge it), the critic Jules Castagnary published in Le Siècle a review - very different in tone and approach - where the terms “impressionist” and "impressionism” are used for the first time in a thoughtful way.

Here is the relevant – very illuminating – excerpt:

"The common view that brings these artists together in a group and makes of them a collective force within our disintegrating age is their determination not to aim for perfection, but to be satisfied with a certain general aspect. Once the impression is captured, they declare their role finished. The term Japanese, which was given them first, made no sense. If one wishes to characterize and explain them with a single word, then one would have to coin the word impressionists. They are impressionists in that they do not render a landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape. The word itself has passed into their language: in the catalogue the Sunrise by Monet is called not landscape, but impression. Thus they take leave of reality and enter the realms of idealism."

Considering both texts, it seems much more likely that the “impressionists” themselves adopted the term because of the views so coherently expressed in the latter article, not because of Leroy's little parody.