Biography on A&E

Edward Herrmann narrates a two-part history of 19th-century French Impressionist painters. Part 1 introduces Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas; and chronicles their friendship and their first experimentations with the style. Also: comments from art historians, such as John House, Anne Higonnet, Linda Nochlin and Richard Kendall, who says, “Impressionism is now seen as a very comfortable art, [yet] when it happened, [it] was the toughest, most radical, most challenging art of any period in history.”