Abstract: As a revolutionary painting school, impressionists develop a special plane configuration that deserves phenomenological description and critical reflection over the philosophical assumptions behind it. Impressionists claim to represent impressions as they are, so it strictly restricts the object to be represented within the field of the physical world, and in the process of painting, they try to remove all the processing activities that are external to the original impression and to use separate color blocks and rough brushstrokes so that they may represent the instant impression in the picture. By analyzing this plain configuration, this article explores the special concept of impression postulated by the Impressionists, which is, behind the passive point stimulation on the retina of the reflected light with subjective factors completely removed, there have assumed the relationship of atomic separation between the subject and object, as well as the sense-data theory. As a representative of post-impressionism, Paul Cézanne reflected on the difficulties encountered by this theoretical assumption of impressionism. By restoring the stable structure of the represented object, Cézanne attempted to present a more primitive perceptional relationship between the painter and the represented object in the picture.

Key words: impressionism, perception, sense-data, post-impressionism, Paul Cézanne