Impressionism is an art "movement" that started around the 1870s. It was centered around a group of friends who gathered in France and painted in a style that was non-realistic or at least wasn't focused on getting every last detail of their paintings 100% accurate. It was more about crating the impression of something - making the viewer of the piece of art see whats there without a ton of detail. If you've seen a Monet (even just a print in a bathroom or somewhere) then you've seen impressionism.
Anyway, this about impressionism as a whole. I'll write something up on that later, or you can just google the 3 million pages that already exist on the internet about Impressionism.
No, this is about the coolest guy in any painting from that time period. The guy in in Renoir's painting, 'Near The Lake', which features a guy standing, smoking a cigarette with a little girl staring up at him. I love the painting as a whole but especially love the outfit the guys is wearing. It's 1879ish and the guy has on what appears to be a leopard print hat, blue t-shirt and some sort of fuzzy jacket. He looks like he stepped out of the 1970s, not the 1790s
Look at this guy! Now in reality he quite possibly is the creepy cousin or uncle that only comes around every few years, but the Renoir did him a favor with this picture and captured his coolness.
One of the things I do like about the impressionist group is that they painted real life. many times they were painting outside while events were taking place so they ended up painting real people or at least their impression of the real people doing real things. I have no doubt that this guys existed, thought he was some pretty hot stuff and actually pulled it off some of the time.