Impressionism Trivia
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50 free Impressionism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Impressionism was named by a critic who meant it as an insult, launched in a photographer's studio, and dismissed as 'wallpaper in its embryonic state'. This quiz covers the movement from the Académie and the Salon that the young painters rebelled against, through Gleyre's studio, the Café Guerbois, the Salon des Refusés of 1863, tin paint tubes and en plein air, to the eight exhibitions of 1874 to 1886 and the Seurat split. Then it turns to the painters and pictures: Monet at Le Havre, Rouen and Giverny, the Water Lilies and the $110 million Grainstacks; Manet's Déjeuner and Olympia; Renoir's dance at the Moulin de la Galette and Boating Party; Degas the reluctant realist; Pissarro from St Thomas; Morisot, Cassatt, Sisley, Caillebotte and Bazille; Durand-Ruel the dealer, and the Orsay, Orangerie and Marmottan museums that hold the work today. Easy questions suit anyone who has stood in front of a haystack; the expert tier asks for critics, cafés and dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the movement, its artists and its paintings, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Claude Monet and on Post-Impressionism.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Impressionism derives from the title of a painting by which artist?
Claude Monet
Impression, Sunrise shows his home port in Normandy in 1872.
Q 02Which critic coined the term 'Impressionists' in a satirical 1874 review?
Louis Leroy
He wrote that 'wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape'.
Q 03In which Parisian newspaper did the mocking review that named Impressionism appear?
Le Charivari
The artists soon accepted the label themselves.
Q 04Where was the First Impressionist Exhibition held in April 1874?
The studio of the photographer Nadar
Thirty artists took part; Manet declined.
Q 05How many times did the Impressionists exhibit together between 1874 and 1886?
Eight
Membership shifted every time; only one painter showed at all of them.
Q 06Which painter was the only artist to show at every one of the group's exhibitions?
Camille Pissarro
John Rewald called him the 'dean of the Impressionist painters'.
Q 07What French phrase describes the Impressionists' practice of painting outdoors?
En plein air
They finished paintings out of doors rather than making sketches to be worked up in the studio.
Q 08Under which academic painter did Monet, Renoir and Sisley meet as students in the early 1860s?
Charles Gleyre
They discovered a shared taste for landscape and modern life over history painting.
Q 09Which café on the Avenue de Clichy was the group's favourite meeting place, with Manet leading?
Café Guerbois
Pissarro, Cézanne and Guillaumin soon joined the circle.
Q 10Which Manet painting, rejected by the 1863 Salon, shows a nude woman picnicking with clothed men?
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
The composition borrows from a Raimondi engraving after Raphael.
Q 11Which emperor decreed the 1863 Salon des Refusés so the public could judge the rejected works?
Napoleon III
Many came only to laugh, but it drew more visitors than the official Salon.
Q 12Which painter did the Impressionists regard as their leader, though he never exhibited with them?
Édouard Manet
He insisted 'the Salon is the real field of battle'; the others avoided his favourite dark pigment.
Q 13Which Impressionist rejected the label, preferring 'realist', and belittled painting outdoors?
Edgar Degas
He believed in the primacy of drawing over colour; more than half his works depict dancers.
Q 21Pissarro was born on which Caribbean island, then a Danish colony?
St Thomas
He was Danish-French, and later a father figure to Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
Q 22Which wealthy painter debuted with The Floor Scrapers in 1876 and later helped the state buy Manet's Olympia?
Gustave Caillebotte
His Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877) was praised for its photographic precision.
Q 23Which American museum owns Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day?
The Art Institute of Chicago
It was first shown at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877.
Q 14Which of the four Gleyre students was killed at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande in 1870?
Frédéric Bazille
He had joined a Zouave regiment a month after the Franco-Prussian War began.
Q 15Which mid-century innovation in paint packaging let the Impressionists work spontaneously outdoors?
Premixed paints in tin tubes
The tubes resembled modern toothpaste tubes.
Q 16Which art dealer championed the Impressionists, staging shows in London and New York?
Paul Durand-Ruel
He recognised their potential as early as 1870 and held his first big show of their work in London in 1872.
Q 17Which two Neo-Impressionists' invitation to the eighth exhibition in 1886 split the group?
Paul Signac and Georges Seurat
Pissarro adopted their pointillist style himself at 54.
Q 18Which American painter did Degas invite to show with the Impressionists in 1879?
Mary Cassatt
Born near Pittsburgh, she later steered the Havemeyers and other US collectors towards the movement.
Q 19Which Impressionist was married to Manet's brother Eugène?
Berthe Morisot
She was the only woman in the first exhibition of 1874, showing ten works.
Q 20Which Impressionist, born in Paris to British parents, painted the Thames at Hampton Court?
Alfred Sisley
He spent most of his life in France, later around Moret-sur-Loing.
Q 24Which port town, Monet's home town, is depicted in Impression, Sunrise?
Le Havre
He painted a series of views of the port during a visit in 1872.
Q 25Which Paris museum usually displays Impression, Sunrise?
Musée Marmottan Monet
It was stolen from there in 1985 and recovered in 1990.
Q 26In which village did Monet settle from 1883 and build his water-lily pond?
Giverny
The garden occupied him for the last 20 years of his life.
Q 27Approximately how many Water Lilies paintings did Monet make?
250
A set of large murals has a permanent home in two oval rooms in a Paris museum.
Q 28Which Paris museum houses Monet's largest Water Lilies murals in a pair of oval rooms?
Musée de l'Orangerie
The French state built the rooms in the 1920s as a permanent home for them.
Q 29Which cathedral did Monet paint more than thirty times in 1892–94 under different light?
Rouen
He reworked the canvases in his studio in 1894.
Q 30A Monet Grainstacks painting sold in 2019 for what record price?
$110.7 million
A Chicago museum holds six of the twenty-five Haystacks.