For most audience and art critics, the bright colors of the paintings were shocking and vulgar, their compositions were strange, their short, slapdash brushstrokes made their paintings practically illegible. Why didn't these artists take the time to finish their paintings, viewers wondered? While the other works were equally controversial, they were particularly bemused by Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise - especially its title. Monet's painting garnered a great deal of scathing criticism from the public who believed it to be an unfinished piece of work. Art critics were divided, with some flatly panning the work for its unfinished appearance. Other, more progressive, art critics praised it for a modern approach.
Louis Leroy, an art critic for the French satirical newspaper, Le Charivari called his nasty, satirical review of the exhibition, Exhibition of Impressionists, which was inspired by Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise. It was a funny article in the form of a dialogue between two visitors, bewildered and appalled. He wrote: “Impression - I knew it. I was just saying to myself, ‘if I'm impressed, there must be an impression in there’... And what freedom, what ease in the brushwork! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more labored than this seascape!” He used this expression in a mocking sense, but it was later accepted by the painters themselves, and in 1877 the Association exhibited under that name.
