Considering the enormous popularity Impressionist art enjoys today, and considering the major influence it has had on numerous subsequent artistic movements, it is hard to imagine a time when it was looked upon with almost universal disdain. But it was indeed so when an early group of French Impressionists held their first independent show in 1874. Critics, appalled at the short, spontaneous brush strokes and bright colors, called the likes of Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, and Degas "lunatics." But