Louis Leroy

Louis Leroy (* 1812 in Paris, † 1885 ) was a French journalist, playwright, painter and art critic. He coined the term in a derogatory intention Impressionism.

Leroy worked for three decades for the magazines Le Journal amusing, Charivari and Gaulois. He also wrote a dozen successful plays, especially comedies, two of them in collaboration with Eugène Labiche ( Il est de la police and Brûlons Voltaire ). Leroy also worked as a landscape painter and printmaker. From 1835 to 1861 he exhibited regularly in the Salon de Paris.

The term Impressionism he coined in an article of 25 April 1874 Charivari, inspired by Claude Monet's image of a sunrise ( Impression soleil levant). Leroy referenced in the article in dialogic form a purported exhibition tour with a conservative old landscape painter. During the rapporteur woos understanding of the works, he also noted the critical and increasingly outraged opinions of the fictitious traditionalists Joseph Vincent to some of the paintings, including from Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. The criticism Vincent refers primarily to the quality craftsmanship, it culminates in the assertion Vincent, an " initial design for a wallpaper pattern is more mature than this seascape of Monet ". At the end of the farcical scene of the overtaxed old painter is crazy.