More than a hundred years have passed since Manet's exhibition at the Martinet Gallery proclaimed the discontent of a generation with the academic way of seeing art. Living the bohemian lifestyle of modern myth, the artists later called "impressionists" formed their own alternative society, whose meetings took place in cafés in Monmartre and in their own studios. Works by Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Cézanne were rejected out of hand by the Salon of 1873, but the following was the first of eight years of "impressionist" exhibitions: the group became famous for a journalist's mocking comment on "Impression: Soleil levant de Monet" and by a review that appeared in "Le Figaro" that described the artists as a group of unfortunate people corrupted by the madness of ambition. But were Impressionist paintings just decorative surfaces that had no value beyond their pleasing combinations of shape and color, or did they represent the influence of larger social forces, the alienation of the modern metropolis? Were the colors playful experiments or did they reflect measured philosophical and scientific beliefs? Taking an alternative view of these artists and their methods, and taking into account his own research into perception, Paul Smith examines the social, political and intellectual context in which Impressionism emerged. In the various chapters, he tries to dispel the idea that Impressionism did not care about the social world from which it emerged, and, in doing so, offers a timely new appreciation of the group that inspired the modern ideal of the artistic rebel.