The impressionists change the way artists paint the world around them

By going into the landscape to paint, the Impressionists were able to create new, fresher depictions of nature.

Prior to the nineteenth century, paintings were mainly produced in the artist's studio. Artists might sketch individual details outdoors, but these were only used as part of the preparatory process. Back in the studio, these details were carefully rearranged to form a realistic, highly finished, well-balanced composition.

Gradually, painters began to want to represent precise effects of light and weather. In the 1820s, John Constable sketched a detailed series of cloud studies, noting down the time of day and the prevailing wind to pinpoint the precise weather conditions. J. M. W. Turner asked to be lashed to a ship's mast in a storm to get a real sense of the sea at its wildest. Eugene Boudin argued that artists should paint outdoors, because "everything painted on the spot has a strength, a power, a vividness that cannot be recaptured in the studio."

Boudin was a friend and mentor of the young Claude Monet, who adopted the practice of open-air painting with enthusiasm, making it one of the cornerstones of his style and that of the other Impressionists. It appealed, above all, to their desire for a direct approach to nature. They avoided historical scenes or moral messages in their canvases, insisting that artists should concentrate on capturing the colour intensity of the visual world before their eyes.

The Impressionist artists were fortunate that this belief coincided with the advent of technological advances that simplified painting outdoors. The availability of zinc paint tubes transformed their working methods. Previously, artists had been obliged to mix their own pigments and oils in small batches that dried up if not used quickly. The new, readymade colours were both easy to use and portable. In addition, the spread of the railways enabled the Impressionists to make day trips out of Paris, in search of suitable settings for their pictures,

21 Poppies

Claude Monet, 1873