Where Does The Name "Impressionism" Come From

I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit the National Gallery in London in the summer of 2021.

It was the first time when I had the opportunity to see with my own eyes the works of Rubens, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Picasso, Gaugain…

And then, of course, there were the Impressionists. Monet, Cezanne, Degas - what more can a landscape artist like myself dream of?

Strangely enough, the Impressionist movement owes its name to one of its critics.

On 25 April 1874, after visiting the exhibition organised by the “Anonymous society of painters, sculptors and engravers”, French journalist and art critic Louis Leroy wrote a review on the event, which was printed in the satirical newspaper he was working for, Le Charivari.

Referring to Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”, Leroy wrote:

"Impression - I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it — and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape."

The words of Leroy could, of course, hardly be considered flattering.

But the young artists that were exhibited at the show - Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Armand Guillaumin, and Berthe Morisot - adopted the term themselves, and so the name of one of the most important art movements in history was born.

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Thank you for visiting my website. My name is Andrei Voica, and I am a Moldovan landscape artist. I paint from the heart, for the world.

If you’d like to take a look at my paintings, please visit my Paintings Collection