Writing with the sensitivity and erudition that made him one of the most illuminating and accessible writers of his generation, Meyer Schapiro offers a fresh and exciting new look at "the Impressionist family". He bypasses the popular preference, in art historical writing, for a strictly theoretical point of view and employs a broad range of contextual themes -- art history, economics, politics, philosophy, literature, science, and even environmental history -- to examine the Impressionist painters and their works within their original cultural settings. Exploring minute details and broad, historical trends, reaching back into eighteenth-century history and ahead to Abstract Expressionism, Schapiro provides an unparalleled account of Impressionism as a turning point in the history of modern art.