This illustrated book provides a fascinating insight into the lives and work of the great Impressionist artists and their contemporaries - the social and political conditions in which they struggled for recognition, the nature of their conflict with the art establishment of the time, their relations with each other, their loves and their friendships. The artists featured include Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne, van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.