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How scientific advances ushered in one of the best known periods in European painting
Michal Boncza on Impressionism, one of the most enduring instantly recognisable periods in art
(Left) Impression, Sunrise, 1874; (right) La rue Saint Denis - street festivities of 30 June 1878, Paris

IN 1874, three years after the bloody and traumatic demise of the Paris Commune, Claude Monet — son of a Parisian greengrocer — showed his work at group exhibition in Paris of like-minded painters.

His canvas, laconically titled Impression, Sunrise, depicts in swift and almost off-hand brush strokes the hazy view of the port of his adopted city Le Havre, as seen from his window at a dawn enveloped by dense fog.

The canvas's title provided the Le Charivary magazine’s art critic Louis Leroy's with the headline “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” for the review — not particularly imaginative, except for the neologism “impressionists.” It stuck like glue.

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