Until Now
Art & Culture

Impressionism

Painters leave the studio, and representation starts coming apart.

When
Duration
33 years
Known to
± 2 years
Era
Industrial, Holocene

Rejected by the official Salon, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Pissarro exhibit independently from 1874, painting outdoors with portable tubed paint, catching light and momentary effect rather than finished detail. Photography had taken over the documentary role, freeing painting to do something else. What follows accelerates — Cézanne, Van Gogh, then Cubism in 1907 — until representation is optional.

Just before

Just after