Color in the Eye

Up close, an Impressionist canvas can look like a mess of separate dabs. Step back, and the eye blends them. Instead of mixing a smooth gray on the palette, the painters laid small strokes of pure color side by side and let the viewer's eye combine them.

This is why shadows in their work are rarely flat brown or black. A shadow might be built from blues, violets, and greens, because the artists painted the color they actually saw in changing light rather than the color objects were "supposed" to be.

Their emphasis on direct observation, outdoor painting, and capturing fleeting light opened the door for the modernist movements that followed. Van Gogh, Seurat, and Cezanne all built on what the Impressionists started. The insult became a badge of honor.