History is not always a very good guide to the way people felt about things when they happened. Nothing today would seem more expressive of health and well-being than such great Impressionist paintings as Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere or Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party or Monet's Terrace of Sainte-Adresse. Simply to look at these paintings makes one think of how agreeable life must have been at that time. But, in fact, when they were first exhibited, most people regarded them as immoral daubs—flashy, inept and practically incomprehensible—while those most qualified to judge regarded them, at best, as a repudiation of everything that mattered. To academicians art was a matter of trade secrets, and nature was manipulated according to fixed laws. The Impressionists, on the contrary , staked everything on the actual and previously unrecorded look of things. As the name suggests, they saw the world in terms of instantaneous impressions that were to be set down as truthfully as possible.
-John Russell, Time-Life Library, The World of Matisse 1869-1954
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| Édouard Manet oil on canvas 1882 Un bar aux Folies Bergère |
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| Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on Canvas 1881 Le Déjeuner des canotiers |
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| Claude Monet Oil on Canvas 1867 Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse |
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