Impression, Sunrise

In France, public and critics both had a great deal of fun at the expense of the independent exhibitions organized in Paris. It was a journalist, Alfred Leroy, who coined the nickname “Impressionist,” having used the word in his famous satirical article in Charivari on April 25, 1874. The trigger had been a work that Monet had painted in Le Havre two years earlier and that was listed in the catalog as Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). As early as 1877, the initially pejorative term was adopted by the artists themselves and used as a rallying cry.