Impression-Sunrise, Claude Monet Impressionism is an art movement born of the French association of some artists of the mid-nineteenth century. Heavily criticized in its early stages , this trend is particularly evident from 1874 to 1886 by eight public exhibitions in Paris, and marked the breakdown of modern art with the academic . Impressionism is particularly characterized by a tendency to record the fleeting impressions , the mobility of phenomena , rather than stable and conceptual aspect of things, and to refer directly to the canvas. Impressionism was a great influence on the art of this period , painting course, but also the literature and music .