Impressionism was a movement which aimed to capture the feeling of the moment, and emphasized the process of paint application and experimentation with light.

Impressionism arrived late in Britain. French painters had been using the style since the late 1860s, but it only started to become acceptable in Britain towards the end of the 19th Century.

Artist like George Clausen and Henry Herbert La Thangue used some Impressionist painting techniques but the subjects of their paintings were quite traditional, chiefly peasants and rural landscapes.