Before the 1860s and the debut of Impression, Sunrise, the term "impressionism" was originally used to describe the effect of a natural scene on a painter, and the effect of a painting on the viewer. By the 1860s, "impression" was used by transference to describe a painting which relayed such an effect.[8] In turn, impression came to describe the movement as a whole.
Initially used to describe and deprecate a movement, the term Impressionism "was immediately taken up by all parties" to describe the style,[7] and Monet’s Impression, Sunrise considered to encapsulate the start of the movement and its name.