3D Gallery
Why the Impressionists Went Outside
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Why the Impressionists Went Outside is a 3D virtual gallery on MyGallery3D, a walkable online exhibition of 20 works. Step inside and explore it in your browser: no app, no headset.
Welcome to a 3D virtual gallery you can walk through in your browser, exploring how a band of rebellious painters changed the way we see light.
The word Impressionism was born as an insult. In 1874, critic Louis Leroy seized on Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise to mock an entire exhibition in the newspaper Le Charivari, calling the artists mere "impressionists." They kept the name. Within a decade, their loose, sunlit brushwork had become synonymous with modern life.
The Académie des Beaux-Arts controlled French art through its annual Salon, where juries routinely rejected the group's work. In 1863 alone, so many paintings were refused that Emperor Napoleon III opened a Salon des Refusés. By 1874 the artists formed their own society and mounted eight independent exhibitions through 1886. Only Camille Pissarro showed at all eight.
Before the Impressionists, paintings were finished in the studio. Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille met in the early 1860s under the teacher Charles Gleyre and began completing pictures outdoors, working directly in sunlight. They used short, broken strokes of pure unmixed colour rather than smooth blending. The goal was not detail but the fleeting effects of light, captured in a bright and varied palette that startled audiences.
Claude Monet, 1901
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1867
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1900
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1906
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1897
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1890, 91
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1880
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1882
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1877
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1890, 91
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1900, 1
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1873
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1886
Oil on canvas · France
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey B. Borland · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
Oil on canvas · France
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection · Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Wikipedia
Claude Monet, 1890, 91
Oil on canvas · France
Gift of Arthur M. Wood, Sr. in memory of Pauline Palmer Wood · Claude Monet on Wikipedia
