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Ivory

Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is the same, regardless of the species of origin, but ivory contains structures of mineralised collagen. The trade in certain teeth and tusks other than elephant is well established and widespread; therefore, "ivory" can correctly be used to describe any mammalian teeth or tusks of commercial interest which are large enough to be carved or scrimshawed.

Besides natural ivory, ivory can also be produced synthetically,   hence (unlike natural ivory) not requiring the retrieval of the material from animals. Tagua nuts can also be carved like ivory.

The trade of finished goods of ivory products has its origins in the Indus Valley. Ivory is a main product that is seen in abundance and was used for trading in Harappan civilization. Finished ivory products that were seen in Harappan sites include kohl sticks, pins, awls, hooks, toggles, combs, game pieces, dice, inlay and other personal ornaments.

Ivory has been valued since ancient times in art or manufacturing for making a range of items from ivory carvings to false teeth, piano keys, fans, and dominoes. Elephant ivory is the most important source, but ivory from mammoth, walrus, hippopotamus, sperm whale, orca, narwhal and warthog are used as well. Elk also have two ivory teeth, which are believed to be the remnants of tusks from their ancestors.

The national and international trade in natural ivory of threatened species such as African and Asian elephants is illegal. The word ivory ultimately derives from the ancient Egyptian âb, âbu ('elephant'), through the Latin ebor- or ebur.

Uses

Both the Greek and Roman civilizations practiced ivory carving to make large quantities of high value works of art, precious religious objects, and decorative boxes for costly objects. Ivory was often used to form the white of the eyes of statues.

There is some evidence of either whale or walrus ivory used by the ancient Irish. Solinus, a Roman writer in the 3rd century claimed that the Celtic peoples in Ireland would decorate their sword-hilts with the 'teeth of beasts that swim in the sea'. Adomnan of Iona wrote a story about St Columba giving a sword decorated with carved ivory as a gift that a penitent would bring to his master so he could redeem himself from slavery.

The Syrian and North African elephant populations were reduced to extinction, probably due to the demand for ivory in the Classical world.

The Chinese have long valued ivory for both art and utilitarian objects. Early reference to the Chinese export of ivory is recorded after the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian ventured to the west to form alliances to enable the eventual free movement of Chinese goods to the west; as early as the first century BC, ivory was moved along the Northern Silk Road for consumption by western nations. Southeast Asian kingdoms included tusks of the Indian elephant in their annual tribute caravans to China. Chinese craftsmen carved ivory to make everything from images of deities to the pipe stems and end pieces of opium pipes.

In Japan, ivory carvings became popular in the 17th century during the Edo period, and many netsuke and kiseru, on which animals and legendary creatures were carved, and inro, on which ivory was inlaid, were made. From the mid-1800s, the new Meiji government's policy of promoting and exporting arts and crafts led to the frequent display of elaborate ivory crafts at World's fair. Among them, the best works were admired because they were purchased by Western museums, wealthy people, and the Japanese Imperial Family.

The Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, traditionally harvested ivory from their domesticated elephants. Ivory was prized for containers due to its ability to keep an airtight seal. It was also commonly carved into elaborate seals utilized by officials to "sign" documents and decrees by stamping them with their unique official seal.

In Southeast Asian countries, where Muslim Malay peoples live, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, ivory was the material of choice for making the handles of kris daggers. In the Philippines, ivory was also used to craft the faces and hands of Catholic icons and images of saints prevalent in the Santero culture.

Tooth and tusk ivory can be carved into a vast variety of shapes and objects. Examples of modern carved ivory objects are okimono, netsukes, jewelry, flatware handles, furniture inlays, and piano keys. Additionally, warthog tusks, and teeth from sperm whales, orcas and hippos can also be scrimshawed or superficially carved, thus retaining their morphologically recognizable shapes.

As trade with Africa expanded during the first part of the 1800s, ivory became readily available. Up to 90 percent of the ivory imported into the United States was processed, at one time, in Connecticut where Deep River and Ivoryton in 1860s became the centers of ivory milling, in particular, due to the demand for ivory piano keys. Ivory usage in the last thirty years has moved towards mass production of souvenirs and jewelry. In Japan, the increase in wealth sparked consumption of solid ivory hanko – name seals – which before this time had been made of wood. These hanko can be carved out in a matter of seconds using machinery and were partly responsible for massive African elephant decline in the 1980s, when the African elephant population went from 1.3 million to around 600,000 in ten years.

Consumption before plastics
Before plastics were introduced, ivory had many ornamental and practical uses, mainly because of the white color it presents when processed. It was formerly used to make cutlery handles, billiard balls, piano keys, Scottish bagpipes, buttons and a wide range of ornamental items.

Synthetic substitutes for ivory in the use of most of these items have been developed since 1800: the billiard industry challenged inventors to come up with an alternative material that could be manufactured; the piano industry abandoned ivory as a key covering material in the 1970s.

Ivory can be taken from dead animals – however, most ivory came from elephants that were killed for their tusks. For example, in 1930 to acquire 40 tons of ivory required the killing of approximately 700 elephants. Other animals which are now endangered were also preyed upon, for example, hippos, which have very hard white ivory prized for making artificial teeth. In the first half of the 20th century, Kenyan elephant herds were devastated because of demand for ivory, to be used for piano keys.

During the Art Deco era from 1912 to 1940, dozens (if not hundreds) of European artists used ivory in the production of chryselephantine statues. Two of the most frequent users of ivory in their sculptured artworks were Ferdinand Preiss and Claire Colinet.

Mechanical characteristics
While many uses of ivory are purely ornamental in nature, it often must be carved and manipulated into different shapes to achieve the desired form. Other applications, such as ivory piano keys, introduce repeated wear and surface handling of the material. It is therefore essential to consider the mechanical properties of ivory when designing alternatives.

Elephant tusks are the animal's incisors, so the composition of ivory is unsurprisingly similar to that of teeth in several other mammals. It is composed of dentine, a biomineral composite constructed from collagen fibers mineralized with hydroxyapatite. This composite lends ivory the impressive mechanical properties—high stiffness, strength, hardness, and toughness—required for its use in the animal's day-to-day activities. Ivory has a measured hardness of 35 on the Vickers scale, exceeding that of bone. It also has a flexural modulus of 14 GPa, a flexural strength of 378 MPa a fracture toughness of 2.05 MPam1/2. These measured values indicate that ivory mechanically outperforms most of its most common alternatives, including celluloid plastic and polyethylene terephthalate.

Ivory's mechanical properties result from the microstructure of the dentine tissue. It is thought that the structural arrangement of mineralized collagen fibers could contribute to the checkerboard-like Schreger pattern observed in polished ivory samples. This is often used as an attribute in ivory identification. As well as being an optical feature, the Schreger pattern could point towards a micropattern well-designed to prevent crack propagation by dispersing stresses. Additionally, this intricate microstructure lends a strong anisotropy to ivory's mechanical characteristics. Separate hardness measurements on three orthogonal tusk directions indicated that circumferential planes of tusk had up to 25% greater hardness than radial planes of the same specimen. During hardness testing, inelastic and elastic recovery was observed on circumferential planes while the radial planes displayed plastic deformation. This implies that ivory has directional viscoelasticity. These anisotropic properties can be explained by the reinforcement of collagen fibers in the composite oriented along the circumference.

Availability

Owing to the rapid decline in the populations of the animals that produce it, the importation and sale of ivory in many countries is banned or severely restricted. In the ten years preceding a decision in 1989 by CITES to ban international trade in African elephant ivory, the population of African elephants declined from 1.3 million to around 600,000. It was found by investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) that CITES sales of stockpiles from Singapore and Burundi (270 tonnes and 89.5 tonnes respectively) had created a system that increased the value of ivory on the international market, thus rewarding international smugglers and giving them the ability to control the trade and continue smuggling new ivory.

Since the ivory ban, some Southern African countries have claimed their elephant populations are stable or increasing, and argued that ivory sales would support their conservation efforts. Other African countries oppose this position, stating that renewed ivory trading puts their own elephant populations under greater threat from poachers reacting to demand. CITES allowed the sale of 49 tonnes of ivory from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana in 1997 to Japan.

In 2007, under pressure from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, eBay banned all international sales of elephant-ivory products. The decision came after several mass slaughters of African elephants, most notably the 2006 Zakouma elephant slaughter in Chad. The IFAW found that up to 90% of the elephant-ivory transactions on eBay violated their own wildlife policies and could potentially be illegal. In October 2008, eBay expanded the ban, disallowing any sales of ivory on eBay.

A more recent sale in 2008 of 108 tonnes from the three countries and South Africa took place to Japan and China. The inclusion of China as an "approved" importing country created enormous controversy, despite being supported by CITES, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Traffic. They argued that China had controls in place and the sale might depress prices. However, the price of ivory in China has skyrocketed. Some believe this may be due to deliberate price fixing by those who bought the stockpile, echoing the warnings from the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society on price-fixing after sales to Japan in 1997, and monopoly given to traders who bought stockpiles from Burundi and Singapore in the 1980s.

A 2019 peer-reviewed study reported that the rate of African elephant poaching was in decline, with the annual poaching mortality rate peaking at over 10% in 2011 and falling to below 4% by 2017. The study found that the "annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty." Based on these findings, the study authors recommended action to both reduce demand for ivory in China and other main markets and to decrease corruption and poverty in Africa.

In 2006, nineteen African countries signed the "Accra Declaration" calling for a total ivory trade ban, and twenty range states attended a meeting in Kenya calling for a 20-year moratorium in 2007.

Methods of obtaining ivory can be divided into:
 * Shooting the elephant to take its tusks: this method is of concern here.
 * Taking tusks from an elephant which has died of natural causes.
 * Taking tusks from an elephant which has had to be put down for another reason, for example, severe arthritis, or if its last molar teeth are worn out and can no longer chew its food.
 * Among working elephants which use their tusks to carry logs, there is a best length for their tusks. In former times in India, often their tusks were cut back to this length (and often the shortened tusks' ends were bound in copper). This periodically freed pieces of ivory for the carving trade.

Controversy and conservation issues
The use and trade of elephant ivory have become controversial because they have contributed to seriously declining elephant populations in many countries. It is estimated that consumption in Great Britain alone in 1831 amounted to the deaths of nearly 4,000 elephants. In 1975, the Asian elephant was placed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prevents international trade between member states of species that are threatened by trade. The African elephant was placed on Appendix I in January 1990. Since then, some southern African countries have had their populations of elephants "downlisted" to Appendix II, allowing the domestic trade of non-ivory items; there have also been two "one off" sales of ivory stockpiles.

In June 2015, more than a ton of confiscated ivory was crushed in New York City's Times Square by the Wildlife Conservation Society to send a message that the illegal trade will not be tolerated. The ivory, confiscated in New York and Philadelphia, was sent up a conveyor belt into a rock crusher. The Wildlife Conservation Society has pointed out that the global ivory trade leads to the slaughter of up to 35,000 elephants a year in Africa. In June 2018, Conservative MEPs' Deputy Leader Jacqueline Foster MEP urged the EU to follow the UK's lead and introduce a tougher ivory ban across Europe.

China was the biggest market for poached ivory but announced they would phase out the legal domestic manufacture and sale of ivory products in May 2015. In September of the same year, China and the U.S. announced they would "enact a nearly complete ban on the import and export of ivory." The Chinese market has a high degree of influence on the elephant population.

Fossil mammoth tusks
Trade in the ivory from the tusks of dead woolly mammoths frozen in the tundra has occurred for 300 years and continues to be legal. Mammoth ivory is used today to make handcrafted knives and similar implements. Mammoth ivory is rare and costly because mammoths have been extinct for millennia, and scientists are hesitant to sell museum-worthy specimens in pieces. Some estimates suggest that 10 or more million mammoths are still buried in Siberia.

Fossil walrus ivory
Fossil walrus ivory from animals that died before 1972 is legal to buy and sell in the United States, unlike many other types of ivory.

Elk Ivory
The ancestors of elk had teeth, also known as elk ivory, that protruded outwards, similar to animals that have tusks, they were used as a protective measure against predators. Alongside the use of protective measures, the tusks were used during the mating season to be used for dominance, as their antlers were smaller back then compared to now. Evolution made the antlers bigger and the use of their tusks diminished as antlers grew, making them nothing more than teeth in their mouths.

These teeth have the same chemical compound as the ivory found in the highly used and poached elephant tusks, making it another good alternative when it comes to taking ivory as the teeth can be possibly removed without harming the elk themselves.

Among Indian tribes, elk teeth has major significance when it comes to jewelry. Among women, men wore them as well. Either through bracelets, earrings, and chokers, there was deeper meaning for both men and women within the tribes. For the women, it was believed that it would bring in good luck and good health. As for the men, it was seen that they were a good hunter.

Synthetic ivory
Ivory can also be produced synthetically.

Nuts
A species of hard nut is gaining popularity as a replacement for ivory, although its size limits its usability. It is sometimes called vegetable ivory, or tagua, and is the seed endosperm of the ivory nut palm commonly found in coastal rainforests of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia.

title: Ivory


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Infantry fighting vehicle

An infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), also known as a mechanized infantry combat vehicle (MICV), is a type of armoured fighting vehicle used to carry infantry into battle and provide direct-fire support. The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe defines an infantry fighting vehicle as "an armoured combat vehicle which is designed and equipped primarily to transport a combat infantry squad, and which is armed with an integral or organic cannon of at least 20 millimeters calibre and sometimes an antitank missile launcher". IFVs often serve both as the principal weapons system and as the mode of transport for a mechanized infantry unit.

Infantry fighting vehicles are distinct from armored personnel carriers (APCs), which are transport vehicles armed only for self-defense and not specifically engineered to fight on their own. IFVs are designed to be more mobile than tanks and are equipped with a rapid-firing autocannon or a large conventional gun; they may include side ports for infantrymen to fire their personal weapons while on board.

The IFV rapidly gained popularity with armies worldwide due to a demand for vehicles with higher firepower than APCs that were less expensive and easier to maintain than tanks. Nevertheless, it did not supersede the APC concept altogether, due to the latter's continued usefulness in specialized roles. Some armies continue to maintain fleets of both IFVs and APCs.

Early Cold War

The infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) concept evolved directly out of that of the armored personnel carrier (APC). During the Cold War of 1947-1991 armies increasingly fitted heavier and heavier weapons systems on an APC chassis to deliver suppressive fire for infantry debussing from the vehicle's troop compartment. With the growing mechanization of infantry units worldwide, some armies also came to believe that the embarked personnel should fire their weapons from inside the protection of the APC and only fight on foot as a last resort. These two trends led to the IFV, with firing ports in the troop compartment and a crew-manned weapons system. The IFV established a new niche between those combat vehicles which functioned primarily as armored weapons-carriers or as APCs.

During the 1950s, the Soviet, US, and most European armies had adopted tracked APCs. In 1958, however, the Federal Republic of Germany's newly organized Bundeswehr adopted the Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 (also known simply as the SPz 12-3), which resembled a conventional tracked APC but carried a turret-mounted 20 mm autocannon that enabled it to engage other armored vehicles. The SPz 12-3 was the first purpose-built IFV.

The Bundeswehr's doctrine called for mounted infantry to fight and maneuver alongside tank formations rather than simply being ferried to the edge of the battlefield before dismounting. Each SPz 12-3 could carry five troops in addition to a three-man crew. Despite this, the design lacked firing ports, forcing the embarked infantry to expose themselves through open hatches to return fire.

As the SPz 12-3 was being inducted into service, the French and Austrian armies adopted new APCs which possessed firing ports, allowing embarked infantry to observe and fire their weapons from inside the vehicle. These were known as the AMX-VCI and Saurer 4K, respectively. Austria subsequently introduced an IFV variant of the Saurer 4K which carried a 20 mm autocannon, making it the first vehicle of this class to possess both firing ports and a turreted weapons-system.

In the early to mid-1960s, the Swedish Army adopted two IFVs armed with 20 mm autocannon turrets and roof firing hatches: Pansarbandvagn 301 and Pansarbandvagn 302, having experimented with the IFV concept already during WWII in the Terrängbil m/42 KP wheeled machine gun armed proto-IFV. Following the trend towards converting preexisting APCs into IFVs, the Dutch, US, and Belgian armies experimented with a variety of modified M113s during the late 1960s; these were collectively identified as the AIFV (Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle).

The first US M113-based IFV appeared in 1969; known as the XM765, it had a sharply angled hull, ten vision blocks, and a cupola-mounted 20 mm autocannon. The XM765 design, though rejected for service, later became the basis for the very similar Dutch YPR-765. The YPR-765 had five firing ports and a 25 mm autocannon with a co-axial machine gun.

The Soviet Army fielded its first tracked APC, the BTR-50, in 1957. Its first wheeled APC, the BTR-152, had been designed as early as the late 1940s. Early versions of both these lightly armored vehicles were open-topped and carried only general-purpose machine guns for armament. As Soviet strategists became more preoccupied with the possibility of a war involving weapons of mass destruction, they became convinced of the need to deliver mounted troops to a battlefield without exposing them to the radioactive fallout from an atomic weapon.

The IFV concept was received favorably because it would enable a Soviet infantry squad to fight from inside their vehicles when operating in contaminated environments. Soviet design work on a new tracked IFV began in the late 1950s and the first prototype appeared as the Obyekt 765 in 1961. After evaluating and rejecting a number of other wheeled and tracked prototypes, the Soviet Army accepted the Obyekt 765 for service. It entered serial production as the BMP-1 in 1966.

In addition to being amphibious and superior in cross-country mobility to its predecessors, the BMP-1 carried a 73mm smoothbore cannon, a co-axial PKT machine gun, and a launcher for 9M14 Malyutka anti-tank missiles. Its hull had sufficiently heavy armor to resist .50 caliber armor-piercing ammunition along its frontal arc. Eight firing ports and vision blocks allowed the embarked infantry squad to observe and engage targets with rifles or machine guns.

The BMP-1 was heavily armed and armored, combining the qualities of a light tank with those of the traditional APC. Its use of a relatively large caliber main gun marked a departure from the Western trend of fitting IFVs with automatic cannon, which were more suitable for engaging low-flying aircraft, light armor, and dismounted personnel.

The Soviet Union produced about 20,000 BMP-1s from 1966 to 1983, at which time it was considered the most widespread IFVs in the world. In Soviet service, the BMP-1 was ultimately superseded by the more sophisticated BMP-2 (in service from 1980) and by the BMP-3 (in service from 1987). A similar vehicle known as the BMD-1 was designed to accompany Soviet airborne infantry and for a number of years was the world's only airborne IFV.

In 1971 the Bundeswehr adopted the Marder, which became increasingly heavily armored through its successive marks and – like the BMP – was later fitted as standard with a launcher for anti-tank guided missiles. Between 1973 and 1975 the French and Yugoslav armies developed the AMX-10P and BVP M-80, respectively – the first amphibious IFVs to appear outside the Soviet Union. The Marder, AMX-10P, and M-80 were all armed with similar 20 mm autocannon and carried seven to eight passengers. They could also be armed with various anti-tank missile configurations.

Late Cold War

Wheeled IFVs did not begin appearing until 1976, when the Ratel was introduced in response to a South African Army specification for a wheeled combat vehicle suited to the demands of rapid offensives combining maximum firepower and strategic mobility. Unlike European IFVs, the Ratel was not designed to allow mounted infantrymen to fight in concert with tanks but rather to operate independently across vast distances. South African officials chose a very simple, economical design because it helped reduce the significant logistical commitment necessary to keep heavier combat vehicles operational in undeveloped areas.

Excessive track wear was also an issue in the region's abrasive, sandy terrain, making the Ratel's wheeled configuration more attractive. The Ratel was typically armed with a 20 mm autocannon featuring what was then a unique twin-linked ammunition feed, allowing its gunner to rapidly switch between armor-piercing and high-explosive ammunition. Other variants were also fitted with mortars, a bank of anti-tank guided missiles, or a 90 mm cannon. Most notably, the Ratel was the first mine-protected IFV; it had a blastproof hull and was built to withstand the explosive force of anti-tank mines favored by local insurgents.

Like the BMP-1, the Ratel proved to be a major watershed in IFV development, albeit for different reasons: until its debut wheeled IFV designs were evaluated unfavorably, since they lacked the weight-carrying capacity and off-road mobility of tracked vehicles, and their wheels were more vulnerable to hostile fire. However, improvements during the 1970s in power trains, suspension technology, and tires had increased their potential strategic mobility. Reduced production, operation, and maintenance costs also helped make wheeled IFVs attractive to several nations.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States Army had gradually abandoned its attempts to utilize the M113 as an IFV and refocused on creating a dedicated IFV design able to match the BMP. Although considered reliable, the M113 chassis did not meet the necessary requirements for protection or stealth. The US also considered the M113 too heavy and slow to serve as an IFV capable of keeping pace with tanks.

Its MICV-65 program produced a number of unique prototypes, none of which were accepted for service owing to concerns about speed, armor protection, and weight. US Army evaluation staff were sent to Europe to review the AMX-10P and the Marder, both of which were rejected due to high cost, insufficient armor, or lackluster amphibious capabilities. In 1973, the FMC Corporation developed and tested the XM723, which was a 21-ton tracked chassis which could accommodate three crew members and eight passengers. It initially carried a single 20 mm autocannon in a one-man turret but in 1976 a two-man turret was introduced; this carried a 25 mm autocannon like M242 or Oerlikon KBA, a co-axial machine gun, and a TOW anti-tank missile launcher.

The XM723 possessed amphibious capability, nine firing ports, and spaced laminate armor on its hull. It was accepted for service with the US Army in 1980 as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Successive variants have been retrofitted with improved missile systems, gas particulate filter systems, Kevlar spall liners, and increased stowage. The amount of space taken up by the hull and stowage modifications has reduced the number of passengers to six.

By 1982 30,000 IFVs had entered service worldwide, and the IFV concept appeared in the doctrines of 30 national armies. The popularity of the IFV was increased by the growing trend on the part of many nations to mechanize armies previously dominated by light infantry. However, contrary to expectation the IFV did not render APCs obsolete. The US, Russian, French, and German armies have all retained large fleets of IFVs and APCs, finding the APC more suitable for multi-purpose or auxiliary roles.

The British Army was one of the few Western armies which had neither recognized a niche for IFVs nor adopted a dedicated IFV design by the late 1970s. In 1980, it made the decision to adopt a new tracked armored vehicle, the FV510 Warrior. British doctrine is that a vehicle should carry troops under protection to the objective and then give firepower support when they have disembarked. While normally classified as an IFV, the Warrior fills the role of an APC in British service and infantrymen do not remain embarked during combat.

Doctrine
The role of the IFV is closely linked to mechanized infantry doctrine. While some IFVs are armed with a direct fire gun or anti-tank guided missiles for close infantry support, they are not intended to assault armored and mechanized forces with any type of infantry on their own, mounted or not. Rather, the IFV's role is to give an infantry unit battlefield, tactical, and operational mobility during combined arms operations.

Most IFVs either complement tanks as part of an armored battalion, brigade, or division. Others perform traditional infantry missions supported by tanks. Early development of IFVs in a number of Western nations was promoted primarily by armor officers who wanted to integrate tanks with supporting infantry in armored divisions. There were a few exceptions to the rule: for example, the Bundeswehr's decision to adopt the SPz 12-3 was largely due to the experiences of Wehrmacht panzergrenadiers who had been inappropriately ordered to undertake combat operations better suited for armor. Hence, the Bundeswehr concluded that infantry should only fight while mounted in their own armored vehicles, ideally supported by tanks. This doctrinal trend was later subsumed into the armies of other Western nations, including the US, leading to the widespread conclusion that IFVs should be confined largely to assisting the forward momentum of tanks.

The Soviet Army granted more flexibility in this regard to its IFV doctrine, allowing for the mechanized infantry to occupy terrain that compromised an enemy defense, carry out flanking movements, or lure armor into ill-advised counterattacks. While they still performed an auxiliary role to tanks, the notion of using IFVs in these types of engagements dictated that they be heavily armed, which was reflected in the BMP-1 and its successors. Additionally, Soviet airborne doctrine made use of the BMD series of IFVs to operate in concert with paratroops rather than traditional mechanized or armored formations.

IFVs assumed a new significance after the Yom Kippur War. In addition to heralding the combat debut of the BMP-1, that conflict demonstrated the newfound significance of anti-tank guided missiles and the obsolescence of independent armored attacks. More emphasis was placed on combined arms offensives, and the importance of mechanized infantry to support tanks reemerged.

As a result of the Yom Kippur War, the Soviet Union attached more infantry to its armored formations and the US accelerated its long-delayed IFV development program. An IFV capable of accompanying tanks for the purpose of suppressing anti-tank weapons and the hostile infantry which operated them was seen as necessary to avoid the devastation wreaked on purely armored Israeli formations.

Design

The US Army defines all vehicles classed as IFVs as having three essential characteristics: they are armed with at least a medium-caliber cannon or automatic grenade launcher, at least sufficiently protected against small arms fire, and possess off-road mobility. It also identifies all IFVs as having some characteristics of an APC and a light tank.

The United Nations Register for Conventional Arms (UNROCA) simply defines an IFV as any armored vehicle "designed to fight with soldiers on board" and "to accompany tanks". UNROCA makes a clear distinction between IFVs and APCs, as the former's primary mission is combat rather than general transport.

Protection
All IFVs possess armored hulls protected against rifle and machine gun fire, and some are equipped with active protection systems. Most have lighter armor than main battle tanks to ensure mobility. Armies have generally accepted risk in reduced protection to recapitalize on an IFV's mobility, weight and speed. Their fully enclosed hulls offer protection from artillery fragments and residual environmental contaminants as well as limit exposure time to the mounted infantry during extended movements over open ground.

Many IFVs also have sharply angled hulls that offer a relatively high degree of protection for their armor thickness. The BMP, Boragh, BVP M-80, and their respective variants all possess steel hulls with a distribution of armor and steep angling that protect them during frontal advances. The BMP-1 was vulnerable to heavy machine guns at close range on its flanks or rear, leading to a variety of more heavily armored marks appearing from 1979 onward.

The Bradley possessed a lightweight aluminum alloy hull, which in most successive marks has been bolstered by the addition of explosive reactive and slat armor, spaced laminate belts, and steel track skirts. Throughout its life cycle, an IFV is expected to gain 30% more weight from armor additions.

As asymmetric conflicts become more common, an increasing concern with regards to IFV protection has been adequate countermeasures against land mines and improvised explosive devices. During the Iraq War, inadequate mine protection in US Bradleys forced their crews to resort to makeshift strategies such as lining the hull floors with sandbags. A few IFVs, such as the Ratel, have been specifically engineered to resist mine explosions.

Armament
IFVs may be equipped with: turrets carrying autocannons of various calibers, low or medium velocity tank guns, anti-tank guided missiles, or automatic grenade launchers.

With a few exceptions, such as the BMP-1 and the BMP-3, designs such as the Marder and the BMP-2 have set the trend of arming IFVs with an autocannon suitable for use against lightly armored vehicles, low-flying aircraft, and dismounted infantry. This reflected the growing inclination to view IFVs as auxiliaries of armored formations: a small or medium caliber autocannon was perceived as an ideal suppressive weapon to complement large caliber tank fire. IFVs armed with miniature tank guns did not prove popular because many of the roles they were expected to perform were better performed by accompanying tanks.

The BMP-1, which was the first IFV to carry a relatively large cannon, came under criticism during the Yom Kippur War for its mediocre individual accuracy, due in part to the low velocities of its projectiles. During the Soviet–Afghan War, BMP-1 crews also complained that their armament lacked the elevation necessary to engage insurgents in mountainous terrain. The effectiveness of large caliber, low-velocity guns like the 2A28 Grom on the BMP-1 and BMD-1 was also much reduced by the appearance of Chobham armor on Western tanks.

The Ratel, which included a variant armed with a 90mm low-velocity gun, was utilized in South African combat operations against Angolan and Cuban armored formations during the South African Border War, with mixed results. Although the Ratels succeeded in destroying a large number of Angolan tanks and APCs, they were hampered by many of the same problems as the BMP-1: mediocre standoff ranges, inferior fire control, and a lack of stabilized main gun. The Ratels' heavy armament also tempted South African commanders to utilize them as light tanks rather than in their intended role of infantry support.

Another design feature of the BMP-1 did prove more successful in establishing a precedent for future IFVs: its inclusion of an anti-tank missile system. This consisted of a rail-launcher firing 9M14 Malyutka missiles which had to be reloaded manually from outside the BMP's turret. Crew members had to expose themselves to enemy fire to reload the missiles, and they could not guide them effectively from inside the confines of the turret space.

The BMP-2 and later variants of the BMP-1 made use of semiautonomous guided missile systems. In 1978, the Bundeswehr became the first Western army to embrace this trend when it retrofitted all its Marders with launchers for MILAN anti-tank missiles.

The US Army added a launcher for TOW anti-tank missiles to its fleet of Bradleys, despite the fact that this greatly reduced the interior space available for seating the embarked infantry. This was justified on the basis that the Bradley needed to not only engage and destroy other IFVs, but support tanks in the destruction of other tanks during combined arms operations.

Mobility
IFVs are designed to have the strategic and tactical mobility necessary to keep pace with tanks during rapid maneuvers. Some, like the BMD series, have airborne and amphibious capabilities. IFVs may be either wheeled or tracked; tracked IFVs are usually more heavily armored and possess greater carrying capacity. Wheeled IFVs are cheaper and simpler to produce, maintain, and operate. From a logistical perspective, they are also ideal for an army without widespread access to transporters or a developed rail network to deploy its armor.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Infantry fighting vehicle


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ICQ

ICQ New was a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and VoIP client. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You". Originally developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, the client was bought by AOL in 1998, and then by Mail.Ru Group (now VK) in 2010.

The ICQ client application and service were initially released in November 1996, freely available to download. The business did not have traditional marketing and relied mostly on word-of-mouth advertising instead, with customers telling their friends about it, who then informed their friends, and so on. ICQ was among the first stand-alone instant messenger (IM) applications—while real-time chat was not in itself new (Internet Relay Chat [IRC] being the most common platform at the time), the concept of a fully centralized service with individual user accounts focused on one-on-one conversations set the blueprint for later instant messaging services like AIM, and its influence is seen in modern social media applications. ICQ became the first widely adopted IM platform.

At its peak around 2001, ICQ had more than 100 million accounts registered. At the time of the Mail.Ru acquisition in 2010, there were around 42 million daily users. In 2022, ICQ had about 11 million monthly users.

The service was shut down on June 26, 2024, following an announcement on the website of ICQ in May 2024 that the service would be discontinued.

Features
Private chats are a conversation between two users. When logging into an account, the chat can be accessed from any device thanks to cloud synchronization. A user can delete a sent message at any time either in their own chat or in their conversation partner's, and a notification will be received instead indicating that the message has been deleted.

Any important messages from group or private chats, as well as an unlimited number and size of media content, can be sent to the conversation with oneself. Essentially, this chat acts as a free cloud storage.

These are special chats where chats can take place of up to 25 thousand participants at the same time. Any user can create a group. A user can hide their phone number from other participants; there is an advanced polling feature; there is the possibility to see which group members have read a message, and notifications can be switched off for messages from specific group members.

An alternative to blogs. Channel authors can publish posts as text messages and also attach media files. Once the post is published, subscribers receive a notification as they would from regular and group chats. The channel author can remain anonymous and does not have to show any information in the channel description. A special API-bot is available and can be used by anyone to create a bot, i.e. a small program which performs specific actions and interacts with the user. Bots can be used in a variety of ways ranging from entertainment to business services.

Stickers (small images or photos expressing some form of emotion) are available to make communication via the application more emotive and personalized. Users can use the sticker library already available or upload their own. In addition, thanks to machine learning the software will recommend a sticker during communication by itself.

Masks are images that are superimposed onto the camera in real-time. They can be used during video calls, superimposed onto photos and sent to other users. A nickname is a name made up by a user. It can replace a phone number when searching for and adding user contact. By using a nickname, users can share their contact details without providing a phone number. Smart answers are short phrases that appear above the message box which can be used to answer messages. ICQ New analyzes the contents of a conversation and suggests a few pre-set answers.

ICQ New makes it possible to send audio messages. However, for people who do not want to or cannot listen to the audio, the audio can be automatically transcribed into text. All the user needs to do is click the relevant button and they will see the message in text form. Aside from text messaging, users can call each other as well as arrange audio or video calls for up to five people. During the video call, AR-masks can be used.

UIN
ICQ users are identified and distinguished from one another by UIN, or User Identification Numbers, distributed in sequential order. The UIN was invented by Mirabilis, as the user name assigned to each user upon registration. Issued UINs started at '10,000' (5 digits) and every user receives a UIN when first registering with ICQ. As of ICQ6 users are also able to log in using the specific e-mail address they associated with their UIN during the initial registration process. Unlike other instant messaging software or web applications, on ICQ the only permanent user info is the UIN, although it is possible to search for other users using their associated e-mail address or any other detail they have made public by updating it in their account's public profile. In addition the user can change all of his or her personal information, including screen name and e-mail address, without having to re-register. Since 2000 ICQ and AIM users were able to add each other to their contact list without the need for any external clients. (The AIM service has since been discontinued.) As a response to UIN theft or sale of attractive UINs, ICQ started to store email addresses previously associated with a UIN. As such UINs that are stolen can sometimes be reclaimed. This applies only if (since 1999 onwards) a valid primary email address was entered into the user profile.

History
The founding company of ICQ, Mirabilis, was established in June 1996 by five Israeli developers: Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser, Amnon Amir, Arik Vardi, and Arik's father Yossi Vardi. ICQ was one of the first text-based messengers to reach a wide range of users.

The technology Mirabilis developed for ICQ was distributed free of charge. The technology's success encouraged AOL to acquire Mirabilis on June 8, 1998, for $287 million up front and $120 million in additional payments over three years based on performance levels. In 2002 AOL successfully patented the technology.

After the purchase, the product was initially managed by Ariel Yarnitsky and Avi Shechter. ICQ's management changed at the end of 2003. Under the leadership of the new CEO, Orey Gilliam, who also assumed the responsibility for all of AOL's messaging business in 2007, ICQ resumed its growth; it was not only a highly profitable company, but one of AOL's most successful businesses. Eliav Moshe replaced Gilliam in 2009 and became ICQ's managing director.

In April 2010, AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies, headed by Alisher Usmanov, for $187.5 million. While ICQ was displaced by AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, and other competitors in the US and many other countries over the 2000s, it remained the most popular instant messaging network in Russian-speaking countries, and an important part of online culture. Popular UINs demanded over 11,000₽ in 2010.

In September of that year, Digital Sky Technologies changed its name to Mail.Ru Group. Since the acquisition, Mail.ru has invested in turning ICQ from a desktop client to a mobile messaging system. As of 2013, around half of ICQ's users were using its mobile apps, and in 2014, the number of users began growing for the first time since the purchase.

In March 2016, the source code of the client was released under the Apache license on github.com.

In 2020, Mail.Ru Group decided to launch a new version, "ICQ New", based on the original ICQ. The updated software was presented to the general public on April 6, 2020.

During the second week of January 2021, ICQ saw a renewed increase in popularity in Hong Kong, spurred on by the controversy over WhatsApp's privacy policy update. The number of downloads for the application increased 35-fold in the region.

Shutdown
On May 24, 2024, the main page of ICQ's website announced that the service would be shutting down on June 26, 2024. ICQ recommended that users migrate to VK Messenger and VK WorkSpace.

Development history

 * ICQ 99a/b the first releases that were widely available.
 * ICQ 2000 incorporated into Notes and Reminder features.
 * ICQ 2001 included server-side storage of the contact list. This provided synchronization between multiple computers and enforced obtaining consent before adding UINs to the contact list by preventing clients from modifying the local contact list directly.
 * In 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had been issued a United States patent for instant messaging.
 * ICQ 2002 was the last completely advertising-free ICQ version.
 * ICQ Pro 2003b was the first ICQ version to use the ICQ protocol version 10. However, ICQ 5 and 5.1 use version 9 of the protocol. ICQ 2002 and 2003a used version 8 of the ICQ protocol. Earlier versions (ICQ 2001b and all ICQ clients before it) used ICQ protocol version 7.
 * ICQ 4 and later ICQ 5 (released on Monday, February 7, 2005), were upgrades on ICQ Lite. One addition was Xtraz, which offers games and features intended to appeal to younger users of the Internet. ICQ Lite was originally an idea to offer the lighter users of instant messaging an alternative client which was a smaller download and less resource-hungry for relatively slow computers.
 * ICQ 5 introduced skins support. There are few official skins available for the current ICQ 5.1 at the official website; however, a number of user-generated skins have been made available for download.
 * ICQ 6, released on April 17, 2007, was the first major update since ICQ 4. The user interface has been redesigned using Boxely, the same rendering engine used in AIM Triton. This change adds new features such as the ability to send IMs directly from the client's contact list. ICQ has recently started forcing users of v5.1 to upgrade to version 6 (and XP). Those who do not upgrade will find their older version of ICQ does not start up.  Although the upgrade to version 6 should be seen as a positive thing, some users may find that useful features such as sending multiple files at one time is no longer supported in the new version.  At the beginning of July 2008, a network upgrade forced users to stop using ICQ 5.1 – applications that identified themselves as ICQ 5, such as Pidgin, were forced to identify themselves as ICQ 6. There seems to be no alternative for users other than using a different IM program or patching ICQ 5.1 with a special application.
 * ICQ 7.0, released on January 18, 2010. This update includes integration with Facebook and other websites. It also allows custom personal status similar to Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger). ICQ 7.0 does not support traditional Chinese on standard installation or with the addition of an official language pack. This has made its adoption difficult with the established user base from Hong Kong and Taiwan where traditional Chinese is the official language.
 * ICQ 8, released on February 5, 2012 – "Meet the new generation of ICQ, Enjoy free video calls, messages and SMS, social networks support and more."
 * ICQ 10.0, released January 18, 2016. Newest update is 10.0 Build 46867, released on May 27, 2022.

Policy against unofficial clients
AOL (and later Mail.ru) pursued an aggressive policy regarding alternative ("unauthorized") ICQ clients. "Системное сообщение
 * In July 2008, changes were implemented on ICQ servers causing many unofficial clients to stop working. These users received an official notification from "ICQ System".
 * On December 9, 2008, another change to the ICQ servers occurred: clients sending Client IDs not matching ICQ 5.1 or higher stopped working.
 * On December 29, 2008, the ICQ press service distributed a statement characterizing alternative clients as dangerous.
 * On January 21, 2009, ICQ servers started blocking all unofficial clients in Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States countries. Users in Russia and Ukraine received a message from UIN 1:
 * ICQ не поддерживает используемую вами версию. Скачайте бесплатную авторизованную версию ICQ с официального web-сайта ICQ.

System Message
 * The version you are using is not supported by ICQ. Download a free authorized ICQ version from ICQ's official website."

On icq.com there was an "important message" for Russian-speaking ICQ users: "ICQ осуществляет поддержку только авторизированных версий программ: ICQ Lite и ICQ 6.5." ("ICQ supports only authorized versions of programs: ICQ Lite and ICQ 6.5.")
 * On February 3, 2009, the events of January 21 were repeated.
 * On December 27, 2018, ICQ announced it was to stop supporting unofficial clients, affecting many users who prefer a compact size using Miranda NG and other clients.
 * On December 28, 2018, ICQ stopped working on some unofficial clients.
 * In late March, 2019, ICQ stopped working on the Pidgin client, as initiated in December 2018.

Cooperation with Russian intelligence services
According to a Novaya Gazeta article published in May 2018, Russian intelligence agencies had access to online reading of ICQ users' correspondence during crime investigations. The article examined 34 sentences of Russian courts, during the investigation of which the evidence of the defendants' guilt was obtained by reading correspondence on a PC or mobile devices. In six of the fourteen cases in which ICQ was involved, the capturing of information occurred before the seizure of the device. Because the rival service Telegram blocks all access for the agencies, the Advisor of the Russian President, Herman Klimenko, recommended to use ICQ instead.

Child pornography
In 2023, an investigation by Brazilian news outlet Núcleo Jornalismo found that ICQ was used to freely share child pornography due to lax moderation policies.

Clients
AOL's OSCAR network protocol used by ICQ is proprietary and using a third party client is a violation of ICQ Terms of Service. Nevertheless, a number of third-party clients have been created by using reverse-engineering and protocol descriptions. These clients include:

 * Adium: supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, XMPP, and others, for macOS
 * Ayttm: supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC, and XMPP
 * BitlBee: IRC gateway, supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and XMPP
 * Centericq: supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC and XMPP, text-based
 * climm (formerly mICQ): text-based
 * Fire: supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC, and XMPP, for macOS
 * Jimm: supports ICQ, for Java ME mobile devices
 * Kopete: supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, Google Talk, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger and others, for Unix-like
 * Meetro: IM and social networking combined with location; supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!
 * Miranda NG: supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC, Google Talk, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu, BNet and others, for Windows
 * Naim: ncurses-based
 * Pidgin (formerly Gaim): supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, Gtalk, MSN, IRC, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Meanwhile, (IBM Lotus Sametime) and others
 * QIP: supports ICQ, AIM, XMPP and XIMSS
 * stICQ: supports ICQ, for Symbian OS
 * Trillian: supports ICQ, IRC, Google Talk, XMPP and others

AOL supported clients include:
 * AOL Instant Messenger (discontinued in 2017)
 * Messages/iChat: uses ICQ's UIN as an AIM screenname, for macOS

title: ICQ


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Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical 1874 review of the First Impressionist Exhibition published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Overview

Radicals in their time, the early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted realistic scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were usually painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting outdoors or en plein air. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary—to achieve an effect of intense colour vibration.

Impressionism emerged in France at the same time that a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting. The Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it is an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of colour. In 1876, the poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé said of the new style: "The represented subject, being composed of a harmony of reflected and ever-changing lights, cannot be supposed always to look the same but palpitates with movement, light, and life".

The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than delineating the details of the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism is a precursor of various painting styles, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

Beginnings
In the middle of the 19th century—a time of rapid industrialization and unsettling social change in France, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris and waged war—the Académie des Beaux-Arts dominated French art. The Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued; landscape and still life were not. The Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of precise brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artist's hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a thick golden varnish.

The Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of such artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. Using an eclectic mix of techniques and formulas established in Western painting since the Renaissance—such as linear perspective and figure types derived from Classical Greek art—these artists produced escapist visions of a reassuringly ordered world. By the 1850s, some artists, notably the Realist painter Gustave Courbet, had gained public attention and critical censure by depicting contemporary realities without the idealization demanded by the Académie.

In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille—met while studying under the academic artist Charles Gleyre. They discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. Following a practice—pioneered by artists such as the Englishman John Constable— that had become increasingly popular by mid-century, they often ventured into the countryside together to paint in the open air. Their purpose was not to make sketches to be developed into carefully finished works in the studio, as was the usual custom, but to complete their paintings out-of-doors. By painting in sunlight directly from nature, and making bold use of the vivid synthetic pigments that had become available since the beginning of the century, they began to develop a lighter and brighter manner of painting that extended further the Realism of Courbet and the Barbizon school. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were often led by Édouard Manet, whom the younger artists greatly admired. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Armand Guillaumin.

During the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) primarily because it depicted a nude woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, they condemned Manet for placing a realistic nude in a contemporary setting. The jury's severely worded rejection of Manet's painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists.

After Emperor Napoleon III saw the rejected works of 1863, he decreed that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused) was organized. While many viewers came only to laugh, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to the existence of a new tendency in art and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon.

Artists' petitions requesting a new Salon des Refusés in 1867, and again in 1872, were denied. In December 1873, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and several other artists founded the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. to exhibit their artworks independently. Members of the association were expected to forswear participation in the Salon. The organizers invited a number of other progressive artists to join them in their inaugural exhibition, including the older Eugène Boudin, whose example had first persuaded Monet to adopt plein air painting years before. Another painter who greatly influenced Monet and his friends, Johan Jongkind, declined to participate, as did Édouard Manet. In total, thirty artists participated in their first exhibition, held in April 1874 at the studio of the photographer Nadar.

The critical response was mixed. Monet and Cézanne received the harshest attacks. Critic and humorist Louis Leroy wrote a scathing review in the newspaper Le Charivari in which, making wordplay with the title of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), he gave the artists the name by which they became known. Derisively titling his article "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", Leroy declared that Monet's painting was at most, a sketch, and could hardly be termed a finished work.

He wrote, in the form of a dialogue between viewers,

"'Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.'"

The term Impressionist quickly gained favour with the public. It was also accepted by the artists themselves, even though they were a diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion. They exhibited together—albeit with shifting membership—eight times between 1874 and 1886. The Impressionists' style, with its loose, spontaneous brushstrokes, would soon become synonymous with modern life.

Monet, Sisley, Morisot, and Pissarro may be considered the "purest" Impressionists, in their consistent pursuit of an art of spontaneity, sunlight, and colour. Degas rejected much of this, as he believed in the primacy of drawing over colour and belittled the practice of painting outdoors. Renoir turned away from Impressionism for a time during the 1880s, and never entirely regained his commitment to its ideas. Édouard Manet, although regarded by the Impressionists as their leader, never abandoned his liberal use of black as a colour (while Impressionists avoided its use and preferred to obtain darker colours by mixing), and never participated in the Impressionist exhibitions. He continued to submit his works to the Salon, where his painting Spanish Singer had won a 2nd class medal in 1861, and he urged the others to do likewise, arguing that "the Salon is the real field of battle" where a reputation could be made.

Among the artists of the core group (minus Bazille, who had died in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870), defections occurred as Cézanne, followed later by Renoir, Sisley, and Monet, abstained from the group exhibitions so they could submit their works to the Salon. Disagreements arose from issues such as Guillaumin's membership in the group, championed by Pissarro and Cézanne against opposition from Monet and Degas, who thought him unworthy. Degas invited Mary Cassatt to display her work in the 1879 exhibition, but also insisted on the inclusion of Jean-François Raffaëlli, Ludovic Lepic, and other realists who did not represent Impressionist practices, causing Monet in 1880 to accuse the Impressionists of "opening doors to first-come daubers". In this regard, the seventh Paris Impressionist exhibition in 1882 was the most selective of all including the works of only nine "true" impressionists, namely Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Gauguin, Armand Guillaumin, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Victor Vignon. The group then divided again over the invitations to Paul Signac and Georges Seurat to exhibit with them at the 8th Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Pissarro was the only artist to show at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions.

The individual artists achieved few financial rewards from the Impressionist exhibitions, but their art gradually won a degree of public acceptance and support. Their dealer, Durand-Ruel, played a major role in this as he kept their work before the public and arranged shows for them in London and New York. Although Sisley died in poverty in 1899, Renoir had a great Salon success in 1879. Monet became secure financially during the early 1880s and so did Pissarro by the early 1890s. By this time the methods of Impressionist painting, in a diluted form, had become commonplace in Salon art.

Impressionist techniques

French painters who prepared the way for Impressionism include the Romantic colourist Eugène Delacroix; the leader of the realists, Gustave Courbet; and painters of the Barbizon school such as Théodore Rousseau. The Impressionists learned much from the work of Johan Barthold Jongkind, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Eugène Boudin, who painted from nature in a direct and spontaneous style that prefigured Impressionism, and who befriended and advised the younger artists.

A number of identifiable techniques and working habits contributed to the innovative style of the Impressionists. Although these methods had been used by previous artists—and are often conspicuous in the work of artists such as Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner—the Impressionists were the first to use them all together, and with such consistency. These techniques include:

 * Short, thick strokes of paint quickly capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details. The paint is often applied impasto.
 * Colours are applied side by side with as little mixing as possible, a technique that exploits the principle of simultaneous contrast to make the colour appear more vivid to the viewer.
 * Greys and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. Pure impressionism avoids the use of black paint.
 * Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive applications to dry, producing softer edges and intermingling of colour.
 * Impressionist paintings do not exploit the transparency of thin paint films (glazes), which earlier artists manipulated carefully to produce effects. The impressionist painting surface is typically opaque.
 * The paint is applied to a white or light-coloured ground. Previously, painters often used dark grey or strongly coloured grounds.
 * The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection of colours from object to object. Painters often worked in the evening to produce effets de soir—the shadowy effects of evening or twilight.
 * In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly painted with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness previously not represented in painting. (Blue shadows on snow inspired the technique.)

New technology played a role in the development of the style. Impressionists took advantage of the mid-century introduction of premixed paints in tin tubes (resembling modern toothpaste tubes), which allowed artists to work more spontaneously, both outdoors and indoors. Previously, painters made their own paints individually, by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil, which were then stored in animal bladders.

Many vivid synthetic pigments became commercially available to artists for the first time during the 19th century. These included cobalt blue, viridian, cadmium yellow, and synthetic ultramarine blue, all of which were in use by the 1840s, before Impressionism. The Impressionists' manner of painting made bold use of these pigments, and of even newer colours such as cerulean blue, which became commercially available to artists in the 1860s.

The Impressionists' progress toward a brighter style of painting was gradual. During the 1860s, Monet and Renoir sometimes painted on canvases prepared with the traditional red-brown or grey ground. By the 1870s, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro usually chose to paint on grounds of a lighter grey or beige colour, which functioned as a middle tone in the finished painting. By the 1880s, some of the Impressionists had come to prefer white or slightly off-white grounds, and no longer allowed the ground colour a significant role in the finished painting.

Content and composition

The Impressionists reacted to modernity by exploring "a wide range of non-academic subjects in art" such as middle-class leisure activities and "urban themes, including train stations, cafés, brothels, the theater, and dance." They found inspiration in the newly widened avenues of Paris, bounded by new tall buildings that offered opportunities to depict bustling crowds, popular entertainments, and nocturnal lighting in artificially closed-off spaces. A painting such as Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877) strikes a modern note by emphasizing the isolation of individuals amid the outsized buildings and spaces of the urban environment. When painting landscapes, the Impressionists did not hesitate to include the factories that were proliferating in the countryside. Earlier painters of landscapes had conventionally avoided smokestacks and other signs of industrialization, regarding them as blights on nature's order and unworthy of art.

Prior to the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th-century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had emphasized common subjects, but their methods of composition were traditional. They arranged their compositions so that the main subject commanded the viewer's attention. J. M. W. Turner, while an artist of the Romantic era, anticipated the style of impressionism with his artwork. The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance. Photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography inspired Impressionists to represent momentary action, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people.

The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which seemed to devalue the artist's skill in reproducing reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably".

In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of creative expression, and rather than compete with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph—by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated". The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exact representations. This allowed artists to depict subjectively what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked: "The Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph".

Another major influence was Japanese ukiyo-e art prints (Japonism). The art of these prints contributed significantly to the "snapshot" angles and unconventional compositions that became characteristic of Impressionism. An example is Monet's Jardin à Sainte-Adresse, 1867, with its bold blocks of colour and composition on a strong diagonal slant showing the influence of Japanese prints.

Edgar Degas was both an avid photographer and a collector of Japanese prints. His The Dance Class (La classe de danse) of 1874 shows both influences in its asymmetrical composition. The dancers are seemingly caught off guard in various awkward poses, leaving an expanse of empty floor space in the lower right quadrant. He also captured his dancers in sculpture, such as the Little Dancer of Fourteen Years.

Female Impressionists

Impressionists, in varying degrees, were looking for ways to depict visual experience and contemporary subjects. Female Impressionists were interested in these same ideals but had many social and career limitations compared to male Impressionists. They were particularly excluded from the imagery of the bourgeois social sphere of the boulevard, cafe, and dance hall. As well as imagery, women were excluded from the formative discussions that resulted in meetings in those places; that was where male Impressionists were able to form and share ideas about Impressionism. In the academic realm, women were believed to be incapable of handling complex subjects which led teachers to restrict what they taught female students. It was also considered unladylike to excel in art since women's true talents were then believed to center on homemaking and mothering.

Yet several women were able to find success during their lifetime, even though their careers were affected by personal circumstances – Bracquemond, for example, had a husband who was resentful of her work which caused her to give up painting. The four most well known, namely, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond, and Berthe Morisot, are, and were, often referred to as the 'Women Impressionists'. Their participation in the series of eight Impressionist exhibitions that took place in Paris from 1874 to 1886 varied: Morisot participated in seven, Cassatt in four, Bracquemond in three, and Gonzalès did not participate.

The critics of the time lumped these four together without regard to their personal styles, techniques, or subject matter. Critics viewing their works at the exhibitions often attempted to acknowledge the women artists' talents but circumscribed them within a limited notion of femininity. Arguing for the suitability of Impressionist technique to women's manner of perception, Parisian critic S.C. de Soissons wrote:"One can understand that women have no originality of thought, and that literature and music have no feminine character; but surely women know how to observe, and what they see is quite different from that which men see, and the art which they put in their gestures, in their toilet, in the decoration of their environment is sufficient to give is the idea of an instinctive, of a peculiar genius which resides in each one of them."While Impressionism legitimized the domestic social life as subject matter, of which women had intimate knowledge, it also tended to limit them to that subject matter. Portrayals of often-identifiable sitters in domestic settings (which could offer commissions) were dominant in the exhibitions. The subjects of the paintings were often women interacting with their environment by either their gaze or movement. Cassatt, in particular, was aware of her placement of subjects: she kept her predominantly female figures from objectification and cliche; when they are not reading, they converse, sew, drink tea, and when they are inactive, they seem lost in thought.

The women Impressionists, like their male counterparts, were striving for "truth", for new ways of seeing and new painting techniques; each artist had an individual painting style. Women Impressionists (particularly Morisot and Cassatt) were conscious of the balance of power between women and objects in their paintings – the bourgeois women depicted are not defined by decorative objects, but instead, interact with and dominate the things with which they live. There are many similarities in their depictions of women who seem both at ease and subtly confined. Gonzalès' Box at the Italian Opera depicts a woman staring into the distance, at ease in a social sphere but confined by the box and the man standing next to her. Cassatt's painting Young Girl at a Window is brighter in color but remains constrained by the canvas edge as she looks out the window.

Despite their success in their ability to have a career and Impressionism's demise attributed to its allegedly feminine characteristics (its sensuality, dependence on sensation, physicality, and fluidity) the four women artists (and other, lesser-known women Impressionists) were largely omitted from art historical textbooks covering Impressionist artists until Tamar Garb's Women Impressionists published in 1986. For example, Impressionism by Jean Leymarie, published in 1955 included no information on any women Impressionists.

Painter Androniqi Zengo Antoniu is co-credited with the introduction of impressionism to Albania.

Prominent Impressionists
The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France, listed alphabetically, were:
 * Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), who only posthumously participated in the Impressionist exhibitions
 * Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid-1870s
 * Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions
 * Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), although he later broke away from the Impressionists
 * Edgar Degas (1834–1917), who despised the term Impressionist
 * Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927)
 * Édouard Manet (1832–1883), who did not participate in any of the Impressionist exhibitions
 * Claude Monet (1840–1926), the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who embodies their aesthetic most obviously
 * Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) who participated in all Impressionist exhibitions except in 1879
 * Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), who was the only artist to participate in all eight Impressionist exhibitions.
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), who participated in Impressionist exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882
 * Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)

Timeline: lives of the Impressionists
The Impressionists

Associates and influenced artists

Among the close associates of the Impressionists, Victor Vignon is the only artist outside the group of prominent names who participated to the most exclusive Seventh Paris Impressionist Exhibition in 1882, which was indeed a rejection to the previous less restricted exhibitions chiefly organized by Degas. Originally from the school of Corot, Vignon was a friend of Camille Pissarro, whose influence is evident in his impressionist style after the late 1870s, and a friend of post-impressionist Vincent van Gogh.

There were several other close associates of the Impressionists who adopted their methods to some degree. These include Jean-Louis Forain (who participated in Impressionist exhibitions in 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886) and Giuseppe De Nittis, an Italian artist living in Paris who participated in the first Impressionist exhibit at the invitation of Degas, although the other Impressionists disparaged his work. Federico Zandomeneghi was another Italian friend of Degas who showed with the Impressionists. Eva Gonzalès was a follower of Manet who did not exhibit with the group. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born painter who played a part in Impressionism although he did not join the group and preferred grayed colours. Walter Sickert, an English artist, was initially a follower of Whistler, and later an important disciple of Degas; he did not exhibit with the Impressionists. In 1904 the artist and writer Wynford Dewhurst wrote the first important study of the French painters published in English, Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development, which did much to popularize Impressionism in Great Britain.

By the early 1880s, Impressionist methods were affecting, at least superficially, the art of the Salon. Fashionable painters such as Jean Béraud and Henri Gervex found critical and financial success by brightening their palettes while retaining the smooth finish expected of Salon art. Works by these artists are sometimes casually referred to as Impressionism, despite their remoteness from Impressionist practice.

The influence of the French Impressionists lasted long after most of them had died. Artists like J.D. Kirszenbaum were borrowing Impressionist techniques throughout the twentieth century.

Beyond France
As the influence of Impressionism spread beyond France, artists, too numerous to list, became identified as practitioners of the new style. Some of the more important examples are:
 * The American Impressionists, including Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore Robinson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, Catherine Wiley and J. Alden Weir.
 * The Australian Impressionists, including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers, Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin and E. Phillips Fox (who were prominent members of the Heidelberg School), and John Russell, a friend of Van Gogh, Rodin, Monet and Matisse.
 * The Amsterdam Impressionists in the Netherlands, including George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls, Willem Bastiaan Tholen, Willem de Zwart, Willem Witsen and Jan Toorop.
 * The California Impressionists, including William Wendt, Guy Rose, Alson Clark, Donna N. Schuster, and Sam Hyde Harris.
 * Anna Boch, Vincent van Gogh's friend Eugène Boch, Georges Lemmen and Théo van Rysselberghe, Impressionist painters from Belgium.
 * The Slovenian Impressionists, Ivan Grohar, Rihard Jakopič, Matija Jama, and Matej Sternen. Their beginning was in the school of Anton Ažbe in Munich and they were influenced by Jurij Šubic and Ivana Kobilca, Slovenian painters working in Paris.
 * Wynford Dewhurst, Walter Richard Sickert, and Philip Wilson Steer were well known Impressionist painters from the United Kingdom. Pierre Adolphe Valette, who was born in France but who worked in Manchester, was the tutor of L. S. Lowry.
 * The German Impressionists, including Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Ernst Oppler, Max Slevogt and August von Brandis.
 * László Mednyánszky and Pál Szinyei-Merse in Hungary
 * Theodor von Ehrmanns and Hugo Charlemont who were rare Impressionists among the more dominant Vienna Secessionist painters in Austria.
 * William John Leech, Roderic O'Conor, and Walter Osborne in Ireland
 * Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov in Russia
 * Francisco Oller y Cestero, a native of Puerto Rico and a friend of Pissarro and Cézanne
 * James Nairn in New Zealand
 * William McTaggart in Scotland
 * Laura Muntz Lyall, a Canadian artist
 * Władysław Podkowiński, a Polish Impressionist and symbolist
 * Nicolae Grigorescu in Romania
 * Nazmi Ziya Güran, who brought Impressionism to Turkey
 * Chafik Charobim in Egypt
 * Eliseu Visconti in Brazil
 * Joaquín Sorolla and Fermín Arango in Spain
 * Faustino Brughetti, Fernando Fader, Candido Lopez, Martín Malharro, Walter de Navazio, Ramón Silva in Argentina
 * Skagen Painters a group of Scandinavian artists who painted in a small Danish fishing village
 * Nadežda Petrović, Milo Milunović, Kosta Miličević, Milan Milovanovi and Mališa Glišić in Serbia
 * Ásgrímur Jónsson in Iceland
 * Fujishima Takeji in Japan
 * Frits Thaulow in Norway and later France

Sculpture

While Edgar Degas was primarily known as a painter in his lifetime, he began to pursue the medium of sculpture later in his artistic career in the 1880s. He created as many as 150 sculptures during his lifetime. Degas preferred the medium of wax for his sculptures because it allowed him to make changes, start over, and further explore the modelling process. Only one of Degas's sculptures, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, was exhibited in his lifetime, which was exhibited at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. Little Dancer proved to be controversial with critics. Some considered Degas to have overthrown sculptural traditions in the same way that Impressionism had overthrown the traditions of painting. Others found it to be ugly. Following the Degas's death in 1917, his heirs authorized bronze castings from 73 of the artist's sculptures.

The sculptor Auguste Rodin is sometimes called an Impressionist for the way he used roughly modeled surfaces to suggest transient light effects. The sculptor Medardo Rosso has also been called an Impressionist.

Some Russian artists created Impressionistic sculptures of animals in order to break away from old world concepts. Their works have been described as endowing birds and beasts with new spiritual characteristics.

Photography and film
While his photographs are less known than his paintings or his sculptures, Edgar Degas also pursued photography later in his life. His photographs were never exhibited during his lifetime, and not much attention was given to them following his death. It was not until the late 20th century that scholars started to take interest in Degas's photographs.

Pictorialist photographers, whose work is characterized by soft focus and atmospheric effects, have also been called Impressionists. These Impressionist photographers used various techniques such as photographing subjects out of focus, using soft focus lenses or pinhole lenses, and manipulating the gum bichromate process to create images that resembled Impressionist paintings.

French Impressionist Cinema is a term applied to a loosely defined group of films and filmmakers in France from 1919 to 1929, although these years are debatable. French Impressionist filmmakers include Abel Gance, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L'Herbier, Louis Delluc, and Dmitry Kirsanoff.

Music

Musical Impressionism is the name given to a movement in European classical music that arose in the late 19th century and continued into the middle of the 20th century. Originating in France, musical Impressionism is characterized by suggestion and atmosphere, and eschews the emotional excesses of the Romantic era. Impressionist composers favoured short forms such as the nocturne, arabesque, and prelude, and often explored uncommon scales such as the whole tone scale. Perhaps the most notable innovations of Impressionist composers were the introduction of major 7th chords and the extension of chord structures in 3rds to five- and six-part harmonies.

The influence of visual Impressionism on its musical counterpart is debatable. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are generally considered the greatest Impressionist composers, but Debussy disavowed the term, calling it the invention of critics. Erik Satie was also considered in this category, though his approach was regarded as less serious, more musical novelty in nature. Paul Dukas is another French composer sometimes considered an Impressionist, but his style is perhaps more closely aligned to the late Romanticists. Musical Impressionism beyond France includes the work of such composers as Ottorino Respighi (Italy), Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cyril Scott, and John Ireland (England), Manuel De Falla and Isaac Albeniz (Spain), and Charles Griffes (America).

American Impressionist music differs from European Impressionist music, and these differences are mainly reflected in Charles Griffith's poetry of flute and orchestral music. He is also the most prolific Impressionist composer in the United States.

Literature
The term Impressionism has also been used to describe works of literature in which a few select details suffice to convey the sensory impressions of an incident or scene. Impressionist literature is closely related to Symbolism, with its major exemplars being Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Authors such as Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad have written works that are Impressionistic in the way that they describe, rather than interpret, the impressions, sensations and emotions that constitute a character's mental life. Some literary scholars, such as John G. Peters, believe literary Impressionism is better defined by its philosophical stance than by any supposed relationship with Impressionist painting.

Post-Impressionism
During the 1880s several artists began to develop different precepts for the use of colour, pattern, form, and line, derived from the Impressionist example: Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. These artists were slightly younger than the Impressionists, and their work is known as post-Impressionism. Post-Impressionist artists reacted against the Impressionists' concern with realistically reproducing the optical sensations of light and colour; they turned instead toward symbolic content and the expression of emotion. Post-Impressionism prefigured the characteristics of Futurism and Cubism, reflecting the change of attitude towards art in European society. Some of the original Impressionist artists also ventured into this new territory; Camille Pissarro briefly painted in a pointillist manner, and even Monet abandoned strict plein air painting. Paul Cézanne, who participated in the first and third Impressionist exhibitions, developed a highly individual vision emphasising pictorial structure, and he is more often called a post-Impressionist. Although these cases illustrate the difficulty of assigning labels, the work of the original Impressionist painters may, by definition, be categorised as Impressionism.

title: Impressionism


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Talk:Impressionism

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Michelve1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Sociological Impressionism
Hey is there anything on this site to do with Sociological Impressionism, in reference to Simmel, I can see how the artistic fits in with his writing, as it uses ordinary subject matter and it is accessible, any help woulld be welcome, thank you Clare Banting

Notable New Zealand Artist deserves inclusion
I'm a scholar of impressionism and was surprised to see James Nairn not included here, could open the articles sphere to a world view, more content for beyond france section perhaps, thoughts?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/lifestyle/arts/7820531/Retelling-the-story-of-our-first-impressionist

So..
Does anyone know the creator or editor of this wikipedia page? It's for a school project The smartest booger (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

 * There isn't really a single creator of the page that one could point to - it's been built up by lots of different editors over many years. The oldest version of the page I can see is from October 2001, and it looked like this. Since then, hundreds of accounts and IP addresses have built it up into its current form. Girth Summit  (blether)  20:25, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

First Impressionist Exhibition
I believe there should be an article in English about the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, one of the most important exhibitions in the entire history of art. (And eventually for the other 7 Impressionist exhibitions as well. The first is simply the most urgent.) This article exists in French. I put the two   around the text but it doesn't show red. It's the same code as, say, German Impressionists which does come up red. I'm not sure what I failed to do. I haven't done much of this.

Clicking on Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs in this article leads one to The Batignolles Group, which is not right. They overlap but are not synonymous. It is the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs which holds the first Impressionist exhibition in Nadar's studio. It's mentioned in the article but should have its own article with expanded info on exactly which works were shown, which artists participated, etc. Please contact me if you have suggestions for this project. Albiart (talk) 07:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Totally agree, and the lack of an article is one of Wikipedia's major missing pages related to visual arts. I've thought of putting up a stub in the past but haven't done so feeling I couldn't do the topic justice. The article should include a large gallery of images of the exhibited artworks. Thanks for putting attention on this, hopefully your concern will get the ball rolling. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I also noticed the lack of an article on First Impressionist Exhibition, and I also think that it should have it's own article. I have started a draft for the article, which you can see here: Draft:First_Impressionist_Exhibition. If anyone else would like to help contribute, please do. GranCavallo (talk) 05:39, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, have added the creation notice to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've had the article draft moved to mainspace. First Impressionist Exhibition. GranCavallo (talk) 08:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Impressionism