Understanding Art: Impressionism

As Paris underwent massive social and architectural shifts, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Frederic Bazille, and Camille Pisarro broke artistic ground with unconventional portraits of pleasure spots and unlikely landscapes.

Impressionists trekked where no artists had gone before. Monet risked drowning to paint the coast of Etretat, Renoir deftly navigated the social currents of the Moulin de la Galette, and Paul Cezanne inverted landscape perspective.

The "ballet rats" inhabiting Edgar Degas's luminous pastels pulsed with vitality, while Gustav Caillebotte's Floor Scrapers (1875) portrayed laborers for the first time. Female artists also emerged: Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassat, an American.

Seurat married optical science with artistic inspiration in 1884's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, whose countless dots combine colors in innovative ways. Van Gogh studied Japanese prints, and Monet completed Water Lilies.