Includes index

What is impressionism? -- Manet's painting of modern life -- Student days -- Painting outdoors -- Monet and the Seine -- The batignolles group -- Rebelling against the Salon -- A revolution in color -- The impressionist palette -- Café life -- Renoir at the Moulin -- The eye of the camera -- Caillebotte's Paris -- The age of the train -- Out of town -- Sisley's landscapes -- In the garden -- Pissarro's workers -- Patrons and supporters -- Domestic lives -- Morisot's bourgeois women -- Days at the races -- At the theater -- Degas' dancers -- Inspired by Japan -- Cassatt's color prints -- Impressionism in crisis -- World impressionism

Examines the lives of impressionist painters and the influences that shaped their work through re-created albums of letters, sketches, and photographs