Impressionism
Impressionism began in France in the late nineteenth century, when a group of painters started working outdoors to capture how light and color actually change from moment to moment, rather than painting a perfectly finished, detailed scene. The result was looser brushwork, brighter color, and a focus on fleeting atmosphere over sharp detail, which felt shocking at the time but is now one of the most loved styles in art history. This section features work inspired by or rooted in that impressionist approach. Explore this section to see how painters continue to chase light and mood using loose, expressive brushwork.
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Impressionism Explained: How a Rejected Style Taught Us to See Light | Impressionism
What is Impressionism? A clear guide to how a group of rejected Paris painters changed art by chasing light, color and the feeling of a passing moment.
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Françoise Nielly | Impressionism
Françoise Nielly is a French painter known for electric, palette knife portraits built from thick oil and saturated color. Working from black and white photographs, she paints faces with a raw, confrontational energy that has carried her work across Europe, North America, and Asia.
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Pablo Solari | Impressionism
Pablo Solari is an Argentine painter who taught himself by studying classical masters and muralists before developing his own bold, socially rooted style. His large, saturated canvases capture everyday Argentine life, from vineyards to city crowds, often with figures who avoid the viewer’s eye.
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Andrew Salgado | Impressionism
Andrew Salgado is a Canadian painter known for large, emotionally charged portraits built with wild color and texture. Since moving from Regina to London, he has built a career of sold out exhibitions, a documentary, and a major monograph on his work.
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Laurent Parcelier | Impressionism
Laurent Parcelier is a French painter whose sunlit scenes of Provence and the Luberon feel like an endless warm afternoon. He started his career drawing comics before turning fully to painting in 1996, developing a style built from tiny sparks of light and quiet, peaceful spaces.
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Denis Sarazhin | Impressionism
Denis Sarazhin is a Ukrainian painter known for dynamic figures caught in twisting poses, with expressive hands that carry as much emotion as the faces around them. Trained at the Kharkiv Art and Design Academy, he builds his scenes from everyday gestures and small, powerful observations.
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Leon Roulette | Impressionism
Leon Roulette is an American painter working in the Impressionist tradition, chasing the same soft glowing light that drew painters to the style a century ago. He paints everywhere from Alaska to Venice, and once worked as an artist for Disney and Warner Bros.
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Emil Nolde | Impressionism
Emil Nolde was a German Danish Expressionist known for fierce color and rough, glowing brushwork, though his legacy carries a difficult truth: he was an early Nazi Party supporter even as the regime later banned his art as degenerate. His paintings still hang in major museums, and some have become the subject of restitution cases…
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Thomas Wilmer Dewing | Impressionism
Thomas Wilmer Dewing was an American painter known for soft, tonal portraits of elegant women in hushed interiors, work that feels distant yet intimate. A founding member of the Ten American Painters, he lived a quiet, private life split between teaching in New York and summers at the Cornish artists’ colony.
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Lucian Michael Freud | Impressionism
Lucian Freud was a British painter, grandson of Sigmund Freud, known for portraits that stripped away any glamour and left just skin, weight, and presence. He worked only from live sitters, never photographs, and kept painting almost until he died in 2011.
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Paul Gauguin: A Journey into Primitivism and Exoticism | Impressionism
Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist painter known for bold, non-naturalistic color and his search for what he saw as a simpler, more authentic way of life in Tahiti. His flattened forms and symbolic imagery marked a clear break from Impressionism and helped shape the path toward modern art.
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Eduard Manet | Impressionism
Édouard Manet was a French painter born in Paris in 1832 whose bold brushwork and modern subject matter made him a bridge between academic tradition and Impressionism. Paintings like Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia sparked controversy for rejecting classical ideals, paving the way for modern art.
