The "point" of Impressionist art was to capture the fleeting moment, the transient effect, the essential reality of a certain place, person, or time. Impressionist artists worked on site with speed and directness, hoping to distinguish their works with a new freshness, immediacy, and truthfulness. Yet the paintings they exhibited were in fact almost always completed in the studio later. This beautifully illustrated book investigates for the first time the impressions, or painted sketches, that were actually done on the spot. Renowned Impressionist scholar Richard R. Brettell focuses on impressions and how they differ from the finished pictures of some of the best-known artists of the Impressionist movement, among them Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Morisot, Degas, Pissarro, and Caillebotte.The book surveys the various practices of individual artists in the making, signing, exhibiting, and selling of impressions. Brettell discusses the pictorial theories behind the sketches, the sales strategiesfor them, and the various forms they took, including works completed in one sitting, "apparent" impressions, and repeated impressions.

In a concluding chapter, the author considers a small group of works by Vincent van Gogh, who painted with an almost fanatical rapidity and was the only major post-Impressionist painter to push the aesthetic of the impression even further.