Introduction -- First and lasting: histories for the Tache -- The impressionist advertisement -- Photogénie from Renoir to Gance to Renoir -- The "image of Africa" from Conrad to Achebe to Adichie -- Impressionist fraud: Klein, Saito, Frey -- Contemporary impressions and kitsch aesthetics: Doig/Kinkade -- The pseudo-impressionist novel: Sebald, Cunningham, Tóibøn -- Thinking medium: the rhetoric of popular cognition -- Conclusion.