In order to better understand the Impressionist movement, one should explore the movement's foundation, what it strives to represent, and the techniques used to achieve this. The author suggests that Impressionism sprung out of a group of artists trying to resist the classical styles utilized by traditional painters. These artists rallied against the art institute that promised success in exchange for compliance and had a monopoly on the entire industry.

Having rejected the accepted art form and creating their own; these artists are depicted as revolutionaries. After a bold social move such as that, one might expect an organized style of art- however what followed was the spontaneous recording of "sensations". Impressionist paintings are meant to represent the "essence" of a specific moment- unrealistic, unfinished, unstable. They capture the reminisce of a feeling before it had a chance to converse with knowledge, or trap an idea before it gets shaped by experience.
This style attempts to recreate the feeling of that first impression represented by what the artist finds significant. Often times objects are not acknowledged, but replaced instead by patches of color or shapes. The artists claimed that this is how they saw the earth, as colored stains and splotches that represent objects and raw sensation. Unfortunately, the author disagrees "...it is impossible for most of us to shake off the years of experience which have led us to co-ordinate visual stimuli with our knowledge of the world and its ways." (28). Impressionists could not intuitively imagine objects into colorful patches but had to learn this skill. Even then, knowledge and experience challenged the painter's simplistic view and undoubtedly influence their perspective making it impossible to view every scene this way.