German artists are often dismissed for having misused the Impressionist style. More familiar French depictions of modern urban experience contrast with German scenes of rural life. Many would be surprised by an Impressionist painting of a grief-stricken woman in Christ’s embrace. Shouldn’t Impressionism show what poet Charles Baudelaire called “the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent” in modern life? But we miss what is fascinating about German Impressionism if we see it through a French lens. Naomi Hume explores The Munich Secession and America to show how looking at German Impressionism challenges our assumptions about the universality of a canonical style.