Abstract: The impressionist painting became the outset of modern art because impressionist painters had grasped the characteristics of modern life: variability. Their pursuit of variability awakened their time consciousness which was later introduced into their paintings by portraying the transient moments of objects as the theme. In order to capture that moment, impressionist painters valued perception but denied memories and imagination for perception could grasp the original impression of the certain instant while memories and imagination could only catch the past and the future in the complete time consciousness. Impressionist painters were preoccupied with the beauty of transience but ignored that of eternity. Therefore, they were replaced by the subsequent modernist painters shortly after they unveiled the history of modern painting.

Key words: impressionism, modernity, time consciousness