French landscape painting undergoes a change around the middle of the 19th century: there is a great interest in depicting domestic landscapes and simple, unspectacular motifs, and the artists begin to work in the open air. In the Forest of Fontainebleau, around 50 kilometres from Paris, they paint landscapes and peasant life. The Barbizon School, as they are also called, turn away from academic painting and towards nature. They are not a fixed groups of artists, however.
The first exhibition of the artists who today are considered impressionists opens in the studio of the photographer Nadar in 1874. Theses artists are also united in a turn to nature and open-air painting. They are devoted to the fleetingness of a momentary optical impression, the movement of light and how it influences the perception of colour. The movement’s name comes from a painting by Claude Monet, from 1872: Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise).
