The book by the famous art critic Jean-Paul Crespel provides an entertaining account of the daily life of artists whose work constituted an entire era in world painting. Impressionist artists (and among them the author includes E. Manet, C. Monet, Jongkind, Sisley, Pissarro, Cezanne, Degas, etc.) appear before the reader not in the aura of their unfading glory, but in the harsh everyday life of everyday life, in periods of lack of money , restlessness, homelessness. We will find out how and who bought paintings from them, how their personal lives developed, what they quarreled about and how they were friends.