The exhibition is a thematic display of numerous creations by the masters of impressionism. Categories presented include landscapes of Normandy, seascapes, travels to London, the Netherlands and to Venice, the coast of the river Seine, gardens and parks. Several of the some 25 paintings by Claude Monet are landscapes created on the coast of Normandy, but we also showcase pieces from the famous Saint-Lazare Station (The National Gallery, London), the Parliament of London (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille), Dutch tulip fields (Musée d'Orsay) and water-lilies (Musée André Malraux, Le Havre) series.

Artistic efforts of the impressionists are placed in their historical context through works by the great predecessors: Charles-François Daubigny, Johan Barthold Jongkind and Eugene Boudin. The exhibition features a painting depicting the famed cliffs of Étretat by Gustave Courbet (Les Falaises d'Étretat), originally in Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Alongside the wonderful portrait of Claude Monet by painter and friend Auguste Renoir (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), one may also view the unique paintings depicting the Monet family reposing in their garden resort, by Édouard Manet (The Metropolitan Museum, New York) and Auguste Renoir (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.). Renoir's watercolour portraying boating people and Manet's riverbank-themed illustrations for Charles Cros's book of poems were also created near Monet's garden in Argentuil.

The Museum received approximately 140 pages of Pál Majovszky's collection 19th century French graphic. Among these, several impressionist drawings were sketches for a world-famous painting. Alfred Sisley's paintings of the church of Moret, kept in Glasgow and Birmingham, can be seen together with the pastel composition of the Budapest collection for the first time.

The 368-page catalogue in French and Hungarian, was printed by Vince Kiadó (Vince Books).The catalogue introduces the history of collecting impressionist works in Hungary. Several owners of paintings and promoters of new trends knew each other well, their similar tastes refined in everyday discourse; the locale for these meetings and conversations was a table clad in cigar smoke and filled with loud debates, in Café Japán located in Andrássy Street, today Írók Boltja. The edition discusses how these debates helped in creating the impressionist collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the Andrássy, Hatvany, Herzog, Kohner, Majovszky and Nemes collections. It also contains excerpts from the Hungarian press coverage of modern 19th century French endeavour and from the first three decades of 20th century Hungarian criticism. The authors of the catalogue and studies are employees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, the National Gallery of Hungary, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Art History, the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon, the Musée d'Orsay of Paris and the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford.

The exhibition was organised by the Museum of Fine Arts, in cooperation with the French Institute of Budapest and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Paintings, drawings and sculptures arrived from more than 30 European and American collections. The Museum has contributed its three Monet paintings and the best forty pieces from its drawings and etchings collection. The exhibition takes place in eight recently renovated first floor salons of the Museum.