Everyone Discusses My Art And Pretends

Monet's attitude toward critics was shaped by early hostility from the Parisian art establishment. The 1874 exhibition in which his Impression, Sunrise gave Impressionism its name drew ridicule from academic critics, who used the word "impressionist" as a term of mockery. Writing to a friend in a letter preserved in his correspondence, Monet grew skeptical of elaborate intellectual frameworks for painting; he believed the response to a picture should be immediate and felt, not decoded. By his late years at Giverny he had all but stopped reading reviews of his work.