The Impressionism art movement emerged in the vibrant, rapidly changing world of 19th-century France, a time when Paris was buzzing with industrialization, urban expansion, and new technologies like photography and railroads. In the 1860s, the French art scene was dominated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts and its annual Salon exhibitions, which favored highly polished, historical, and mythological paintings in a classical style—think grand, detailed scenes with smooth brushwork and idealized subj