Today it is difficult to imagine a person who would not love the paintings of Degas, Monet, Sisley, Renoir or Pissarro. Meanwhile, during their lifetime they were called crazy, ridiculous, simply unable to draw. Their paintings were criticized for negligence and senselessness, they refused to exhibit in the 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 people completely deprived of income.The collection includes selected letters from the masters of impressionism. In them, masters in need of support share their impressions of art and the humiliating time of hardship. 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.