Today it is difficult to imagine a person who would not love the paintings of Degas, Monet, Sisley, Renoir or Pissarro. Meanwhile, when they were alive, they were called crazy, ridiculous, simply do not know how to draw. Their paintings were criticized for being careless and meaningless, and refused to be displayed in salons. Driven by the desire to capture life itself as an endless series of impressions, they not only became revolutionaries in painting, but also turned out to be completely deprived of earnings.The collection includes selected letters of impressionist masters. In them, artists in need of support share their impressions of art and the humiliating time of deprivation. The letters are surrounded by the most famous works of the masters, as well as sketches and sketches for these paintings, which allows the reader to fully experience the genius of the Impressionists and understand how these virtuosos of the brush thought and felt.