Impressionism: Rebels with a Soft Focus

Step into the buzzing streets of 19th-century Paris, where bright new boulevards and a rapidly modernizing world were transforming everything—except the art establishment. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore unpacks the dazzling rebellion that erupted when a group of young painters refused to play by the Académie’s rigid rules .

From Monet dragging his easel into the sunlight, to Renoir painting pure joy, to Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt reshaping art through the eyes of women, these artists dared to paint life as it truly appeared: fleeting, imperfect, luminous. When the Salon rejected them en masse, the uproar led to the birth of the Salon des Refusés, a showcase of the “refused” that accidentally sparked a revolution .

With humor, insight, and a healthy dose of chaos, this episode reveals how a group of outsiders changed art forever by painting not the world itself, but how it felt to see it .

Rebels. Rule-breakers. Soft-focus revolutionaries.

This is the story of Impressionism — and the permission it still gives us today.

J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

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J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
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