Of late, social historians of art have emphasised how  many Impressionist paintings are staged from the physical and psychological standpoint  of a   particular social type, and  how  they attempt to make the experience of modernity vivid by inviting the spectator to enter the painting imaginatively by adopting the standpoint of this type. The character in question is the casual, male urban observer, known  as the flâneur. However, the flâneur was much  more than  that.  First of all, as the writer Jules Janin   put   it,  flâneur was  "a  wholly  Parisian word  for  a wholly Parisian  passion." Secondly,   the flâneur  was  as  much  a creation of fiction as a real person, and the two types fed off one another. Flaneurs abound in literature, from Balzac to Zola. Thirdly, flâneurie  was  a  pose;  it involved  trying  to make   a  serious profession out of  the  casual occupation  of looking.  Monet's early  works  sometimes  involve  the  spectator  as a flâneur, but most often it is Degas's and Renoir's  works that appeal to the spectator  to  become  this character.  In some  ways then,  it  is only by knowing  about,  and imaginatively  taking  on, the psychology of theflâneur that  we can understand  (or "enter") many Impressionist paintings. This raises many questions about the kind of spectatorship Impressionist paintings demand.  The implication that Impressionist paintings were done for men has become the object of much recent critical attention, particularly among feminist writers.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Man at the Window (1876)