Impressionism as a movement was born in the 19th century. The name of the movement is derived from a title of a Claude Monet painting 'Impression, Soleil Levant' which provoked the art critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.
The characteristics of Impressionist oil paintings are emphasis on light, visible brush strokes, open composition, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles and the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience.
Prior to the Impressionists, other artists focused on common subjects but there approach to composition was always traditional. They arranged their compositions so that the subject commanded the viewer's attention. The Impressionists changed this by relaxing the boundaries between subject and background so that one gets the effect of an impressionist painting resembles a photographic snap shot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance.
The rise of the impressionist movement can be seen in part as a reaction by artists to the newly established medium of photography. The taking of fixed or still images challenged painters by providing a new medium with which to capture reality. Initially photography's presence seemed to undermine the artist's depiction of nature and their ability to mirror reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography 'produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably'.
