Paris 1874, Boulevard des Capucines: a group of artists that were to radically change the rules of the art world, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Frédéric Bazille, mounted an exhibition in the studio of photographer Félix Nadar. The exhibition proved to be a veritable scandal that filled critics with indignation, and they contemptuously labeled the paintings “impressionist” because they had been badly constructed and were ambiguous. In fact, the technique they had adopted was utterly original because it entailed painting outdoors—en plein air—using newly available apparatus and tools such as a portable easel, ready-to-use paints in airtight tubes that came in a whole range of bright colors, and paintbrushes with broad, flat bristles held in place by a metal ring.