The four key artists widely regarded as being responsible for this shift in artistic vision had been friends and colleagues long before the beginning of this artistic movement, and it is only appropriate to list their names here; Frederic Bazille, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet. These four knew each other from shared classes in art, mainly painting classes where they learned conventional painting techniques, and learned to distrust the established convention for art in France at the time. Where the artist worked within a studio, drew inspiration from history and Greek mythology, and working with dominant and dark colors primarily.

The four students found this atmosphere quite boring at the time, then one day took their easels to the forest nearby, and began painting in the open-air setting. Illustrating with their brush strokes the impression of the moment, and showing the effects of light on a subject, a technique that would late become vital to the Impressionist art movement. Later artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were considered to fall into the categories of Post Impressionism and Neo Impressionism, and another striking feature of the Impressionist vision is the combined use of light and strong colors.