Why were the Impressionists laughed at?

The Impressionists were laughed at because they broke almost every rule of what a "real" painting was supposed to look like. In 19th-century France, the official Académie wanted carefully finished pictures, with brushstrokes blended so smoothly that you couldn't see the artist's hand, restrained colours under a golden varnish, and noble subjects like history, religion or portraits. Monet and his friends did the opposite: visible, broken brushstrokes, bright colour, ordinary scenes and fleeting light. To trained eyes, their canvases looked unfinished.

The official Salon jury routinely rejected about half of their works, so in April 1874 thirty artists put on their own show in the studio of the photographer Nadar. The critic Louis Leroy went, and wrote a satirical review in the newspaper Le Charivari. Riffing on Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise, he called the whole group "Impressionists" and joked that wallpaper in its embryonic state was more finished than Monet's seascape.

The insult backfired. The name caught on with the public, and the painters adopted it themselves. Monet later remembered that he had only said "Put down Impression" when asked for a catalogue title, and that the jokes then proliferated. Today, the word Leroy meant as mockery names the whole movement.