A group of young artists in 1874, in opposition to the established authority of the Salon and the Academy, decided to show their work directly to the public in an exhibition which they organized themselves. The artists forming the core of this group - Pissarro, Degas, Sisley, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir and Morisot - came to be known as "the Impressionists." Seen to be following the independent spirit of Manet, they were immediately identified as the avant-garde and their first exhibition became an historic landmark in the development of modern art. We now tend to see the landscapes of Impressionist paintings as perfect images of nature. It is easy to overlook their startling and fragmented appearance at the time they were painted. The documents in this book show how the paintings looked to contemporary eyes: to both the critics and the artists. Some of the criticism these paintings received is almost as famous as the works themselves, and several important documents appear here in English translation for the first time. The book tells the story of the personal struggles, debates, problems and solutions involved in a new way of painting that quickly led in unforeseen directions and took enormous risks with the traditional means of representing the world in art. These experiences are revealed in the letters and recorded comments of the artists themselves, and in the writings of friends and contemporary critics, many of whom, such as Baudelaire, Zola, Valery, Mallarme, Huysmans, Laforgue and Mirbeau, were also novelists and poets. The continuing interpretation of Impressionism within the changing art and art criticism of the twentieth century is examined through the writings of artists such as Leger, Kandinsky, Masson, Matisse and Hofmann as well as recent critics, philosophers and art historians including Meyer Schapiro, Gaston Bachelard, Clement Greenberg and Lawrence Gowing. The text is illustrated with 116 colour plates and 117 black and white reproductions of photographs, documents and contemporary cartoons, prints and drawings. After Harvard Martha Kapos studied painting and the history of art at the Chelsea School of Art, where she is now teaching. Her art criticism has appeared in various magazines including Artscribe, Art Monthly and Screen. A collection of poems was published in 1989 by the Many Press.