While photography afforded a new and - broadly speaking - more naturalistic vision of light than the conventionalized lighting in chiaroscuro painting, it still presented form in i terms of strong tonal lights and darks. Although in their studio-painted studies of interiors the younger independent artists relied greatly on the example of Manet. Degas and Courbet during the 1860s. their landscape work shows them moving away from tonal handling. Thus Monet's reworking of Manet's radical subject of 1863. Luncheon on the Grassin 1865 to 1866. of which only fragments survive, attempted a more authentic depiction of outdoor light effects. A more successful painting. Monet's Women in the Garden (1866). begun outdoors and finished in the studio, created a new unity between the effects of sunlight on landscape and figures.
In their pre-Impressionist work of the 1860s. artists like Monet and Renoir already gave hints of later developments. The shadows in Monet's Women in the Garden, like those in Renoir's Use with a Parasol (1867) and The Pont des Arts (1867) were filled with reflected light and cool blue-violet hues picked up from the sky. contrasting with the pervasive warmth of the sun¬light. Monet's early experiences in outdoor work with his mentor Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) along the Normandy coast, in the late 1850s and early 1860s. gave him an advantage over Renoir who only began painting outside in 1863. He did this at the instigation of his tutor Charles Gleyre (1806-1874). in whose sympathetic anti-academic teaching studio he had first met Monet. Sisley and Frederic Bazille (1841-1870) in the autumn of 1862. Since they all worked together regularly, both indoors and out in the 1860s and early 1870s. they were able to benefit from each other's growing expertise and competence.
When in Paris, they all joined Manet's gatherings of artistic and literary figures at the Cafe Guerbois. on one of the new boulevards -now avenue de Clichy - in the Batignollcs quarter on the fringe of Montmartre. These discussions often included writers and critics like Emile Zola. Edmond Duranty and Theodore Duret. Artists who joined them included Degas. Cezanne. Renoir. Fantin Latour and Pissarro. Monet later recalled that "from them we emerged with a firmer will, with our thoughts clearer and more distinct.' As they only painted during daylight hours, in the evenings they were free to meet, argue and exchange the latest ideas. It was during this time that many of these artists began to formulate the project for independent group shows, which would provide an alternative venue to the official Salon exhibition. This idea finally came to fruition in 1874. the year of the first group exhibition, at which a critic coined the name Impressionism'.
The year 1 869 is now commonly seen as the turning point in the development of the Impressionist style. That summer. Monet and Renoir worked side by side along the banks of the river Seine at La Grenouillere. one of the new leisure spots just outside Paris. With their portable easels and travelling paintboxes, they painted rapid studies in free sketchy brush-work, attempting to capture the fleeting effects of sunlight on mobile water, to note down their impressions before the transitory scene. Although their methods and palette were to change considerably in the following decade, the basis for the new Impressionist techniques was already established.
