Impressionism: still impressive 150 years later

Each year, Impressionism is explored in countless shows around the world. But this year the focus will be even more pronounced as museums mark the anniversary of the movement’s beginning: 150 years ago when the French critic Louis Leroy used the word “Impressionist” as a term of abuse against Claude Monet’s painting Impression, soleil levant (1872), first exhibited in 1874 with a group including Degas, Renoir and Pissarro. The term was later adopted by the artists as a badge of honour.

There will be shows throughout the year tied to the anniversary, kicking off this month with Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum (27 January-7 April) at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and then next month with The Impressionist Revolution from Monet to Matisse at the Dallas Museum of Art (11 February-3 November). There will be focused shows too, such as Monet’s moody paintings of the River Thames (below) in Monet and London at the Courtauld Gallery in London (27 September-19 January 2025), and Mary Cassatt at Work (18 May-8 September) at Philadelphia Museum of Art, which will look at the American Impressionist’s take on gender and labour.

But the big origin story show of the year will be Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism (26 March-14 July) at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which will then travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, with a slightly different title, Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment (8 September-19 January 2025). The show will feature around 130 works including Édouard Manet’s The Railway (1873) alongside paintings that were on show at the official Salon in the same year to highlight just how revolutionary it all was. One thing is for sure, the movement has made a lasting impression...