Monet's flowering poppy fields of Vetheuil, Renoir's glimpses of trees in full leaf with contrasts of orange-blue, red-green and yellow-purple sun-flooded patches; Degas' dancers painted from radical perspectives; Cezanne's dynamic explosions of light that made simple fruits come alive, and Manet's café scenes that served as fascinating windows into the actuality of Parisian social life ... today we admire their brilliance. Their paintings captured the Paris vie insouciante so non-reflective of the world of art in the mid-1800s. Artistic renderings that did not display historical subjects, contain surfaces uniformly worked over with dark, somber colors, reflect the ideals of order and symmetry or obtain a completeness of treatment where even the smallest trifle acquired importance under the artist's brush were simply not pictures at all. The story of how the core Impressionist artists painted their way out of this stagnant, academic quagmire is as fascinating and enlightening as the works they created. In creating fully three-dimensional figures, the lives of Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne are followed simultaneously as this movement unfolds amidst the volatile and changing social and political times and grows from steady rising wave into an unstoppable tsunami.About the Author: Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), French painter extraordinaire, once commented, "If I had not been a painter, I should have liked to be an historian. I don't think any other subject could be so interesting as history." Substituting professor for painter summarizes my sentiments as well. My interest in history and biography began several decades ago and the last several years have been consolidating my researching and reading - culminating into these recent works: Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth: The Last Great Monarchs of Austria-Hungary (McFarland Publishing), They Changed The World, and In Pursuit of Dreams: Extraordinary Women of Achievement. Prior to writing these books, as a professor of developmental psychology and visiting lecturer in England, my published works have included authoring college textbooks, The World of the Child (Macmillan) and Child and Adolescent Development (Wadsworth). My research interests in self-esteem and children's learning styles have resulted in two works, Raising Your Child's Inner Self-Esteem (Plenum) and Critical Thinking (Kendall/Hunt). Interest in children and parenting lead me to create a research-based website on helping parents tackle today's parenting issues: Theeducatedparent.net. My most current writing adventure is on the fascinating lives of the core Impressionists - Manet, Monet, Degas, Cezanne, and Renoir: The Impressionists' Corner at Café Guerbois.