Impressionism as an Expression of Social Consciousness

The article is an attempt to comprehend the emergence and establishing of the Impressionism, to understand the reasons of the reappraisal of artistic values gradually taking place in public consciousness and answer the question how the social demand for a new artistic value was formed. The birth of the Impressionism as a cultural phenomenon resulted from an artist’s interpretation of objective reality, his relations with the society, nature, science, philosophy, religion. The Impressionism was one of the brightest events in the European culture of the mid-1800s which made a great impact on the subsequent development of art becoming the key moment in the transition of the 19th century art to the main artistic trends of the 20th century.