Loading cart…
No products in the cart.
Art Guides · Impressionism
The 10 Most Famous Impressionist Artists
Save articles to your collection
Log in or create a free account, and this article will be waiting in your Private Collection.
Log in or sign upThey were laughed at, rejected by the official Salon and called Impressionists as an insult. Within a generation they were the most loved painters in the world. We ranked the ten famous Impressionist artists people search for most, and for each one we show you their face, three paintings, and the story that makes them who they are.
Start with the three names everyone knows, or read the full list below.
1. Claude Monet
More paintings by Claude Monet
The man who gave Impressionism its name grew up in the port of Le Havre, where as a teenager he sold caricatures of the locals. The landscape painter Eugène Boudin took him out to paint in the open air, and he never really came back indoors. For years he was so poor that he begged friends for money to feed his family.
Then, in the second half of his life, he became the most successful painter in France, and spent four decades painting the garden and pond he made at Giverny. Five of his paintings are in our top ten famous Impressionist paintings, including Water Lilies and Impression, Sunrise.
Explore the artist
Claude Monet
2. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
More paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir
Renoir started work at thirteen painting flowers on porcelain in a Paris factory, and in a way he never stopped. His paintings are full of pleasure: dancing, boating, lunch with friends, children, flowers and soft summer light. "Why shouldn't art be pretty?" he is reported to have said. "There are enough unpleasant things in the world."
In old age rheumatoid arthritis twisted his hands so badly that he painted with the brush wedged between his fingers, from a wheelchair, in the sun of the south of France. He kept painting until the day he died.
Explore the artist
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
3. Edgar Degas
More paintings by Edgar Degas
Degas came from a banking family, trained in the classical tradition and worshipped the great draughtsman Ingres. He showed in almost every Impressionist exhibition, but he hated the word and rarely painted outdoors. His world was indoors: the Paris Opera, cafés, laundries, milliners' shops and the racecourse.
He is above all the painter of dancers, which he drew, painted and sculpted more than any other subject, often caught yawning, stretching or scratching backstage. As his eyesight failed he turned to pastel and to wax, and his sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is now one of the most famous statues in the world.
Explore the artist
Edgar Degas
4. Édouard Manet
More paintings by Edouard Manet
Manet was the son of a judge, a dandy who wanted official success at the Salon and never showed at the Impressionist exhibitions. Yet his scandals, Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass, made him the hero of the younger painters, who gathered around him at the Café Guerbois.
In the summer of 1874 he went to see Monet at Argenteuil and painted Camille and their son in the garden. Renoir turned up, borrowed paints and a canvas, and painted the same family at the same moment. According to the story Monet later told, Manet whispered to him that the boy had no talent and that, as his friend, Monet should tell him to give up painting.
Explore the artist
Édouard Manet
5. Mary Cassatt
More paintings by Mary Cassatt
Cassatt was a wealthy American from Pennsylvania who moved to Paris to become a painter against her father's wishes. Degas saw her work and invited her to join the Impressionists, and she became the only American to exhibit with them. They became close friends and difficult allies for forty years.
She is best known for mothers and children, painted without sentimentality, and for women's private and social lives, at home, at tea and at the theatre. She also persuaded her rich American friends to buy Impressionist paintings, which is a large part of why so many are in American museums today.
Explore the artist
Mary Cassatt
6. Camille Pissarro
More paintings by Camille Pissarro
Pissarro was born on the Caribbean island of St Thomas, then a Danish colony, and became the father figure of the whole group: older, kind, patient and fiercely loyal. He was the only painter who showed at all eight Impressionist exhibitions, and he taught both Cézanne and Gauguin.
For most of his life he painted villages, orchards and farm workers. In his last years an eye infection made it hard to work outdoors, so he took rooms with a view in Paris, Rouen and Le Havre and painted the streets below at every time of day.
Explore the artist
Camille Pissarro
7. Berthe Morisot
More paintings by Berthe Morisot
Morisot was a founding member of the group and showed at every Impressionist exhibition but one, missing it only after the birth of her daughter. A woman of her class could not paint freely in cafés and streets, so she painted the world she could reach: homes, gardens, mothers, children and women at their toilette, with some of the freest, fastest brushwork of the whole movement.
She was a friend and favourite model of Manet, who painted her many times, and in 1874 she married his brother Eugène.
Explore the artist
Berthe Morisot
8. Gustave Caillebotte
More paintings by Gustave Caillebotte
Caillebotte inherited a fortune and could have done nothing at all. Instead he trained as a painter, painted the new Paris of boulevards and balconies with a camera-sharp eye, and spent his money on his friends: buying their paintings, paying Monet's rent and organising their exhibitions. His Paris Street; Rainy Day is in our top ten Impressionist paintings.
He also designed and raced yachts and grew orchids. He died at 45 and left his collection of his friends' paintings to France, which hesitated, accepted part of it, and so made the Impressionists national treasures.
Explore the artist
Gustave Caillebotte
9. Alfred Sisley
More paintings by Alfred Sisley
Sisley was born in Paris to English parents and is often called the purest Impressionist, because he painted almost nothing but landscape: rivers, villages, floods, snow and above all skies. He was a close friend of Monet and Renoir from their student days.
His family's silk business was ruined by the war of 1870, and he spent the rest of his life poor, selling paintings for very little. He died in 1899, still not a French citizen. Within a year of his death his prices began to soar.
Explore the artist
Alfred Sisley
10. Childe Hassam
More paintings by Frederick Childe Hassam
Hassam is the most popular of the American Impressionists. He started as an illustrator in Boston, went to Paris in the 1880s, saw the work of Monet and his friends, and came home to paint New York and New England in the same broken, light-filled strokes.
His snowy avenues, sunny gardens and, during the First World War, the flag-filled streets of New York made him famous. In 1897 he co-founded the Ten American Painters, a group that brought Impressionism into American art.
Explore the artist
Childe Hassam
Questions people ask
Who is the most famous Impressionist artist? Claude Monet. People search for his paintings more than for any other Impressionist, far ahead of Renoir and Degas.
Who were the women Impressionists? Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, both on this list, were full members of the group. Marie Bracquemond and Eva Gonzalès worked alongside them too.
Was Manet an Impressionist? He never exhibited with them and is often called a Realist, but he was their friend and hero, and his work opened the way for theirs.
Are Van Gogh and Cézanne Impressionists? They are usually called Post-Impressionists. Both learned from the Impressionists, and Cézanne even showed with them, but they took painting in new directions after the 1880s.
Can I own a painting by these artists? The originals are in museums, but every painting shown here is available from us as a hand-painted oil reproduction, along with hundreds more by each artist. Start with the ten famous Impressionist paintings.
Enjoyed this story?
Save articles to your collection
Log in or create a free account, and this article will be waiting in your Private Collection.
Log in or sign upSources
- Musée d'Orsay, Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington: collection records for the paintings above.
- Charles S. Moffett and others, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874 to 1886 (1986).
Ranking follows monthly US Google search volume for each artist's paintings (OpenSEO, October 2026). Degas and Manet, and Pissarro and Morisot, are separated by the second most common search for each name. John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla, searched as often as some artists here, are left out because they are not usually counted as Impressionists. We do not publish the figures.
