Monet's Garden: Impressionist Innovation and Beyond

Abstract

While form and design dominated the French Académie in the 19th century, the explosion of a chemical bouquet of new colors in the previous century began to dominate artists' consciousness. Since France, and in particular, Paris, was the locus for two revolutions, one political and the other chemical, it was almost natural for an artistic one to follow, bookended by the work of Manet and Cézanne. We call this revolution Impressionism.