SOURCES:

Renwald, John. The History Of Impressionism.

New York, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946. Print.

This is the quintessential documentation of Impressionism in it's completion.  Though it touches on music, it is primarily about visual art, starting with George Sarraut and going all the way to the end of the impressionists. It is a thick and wordy text with a great deal of detail about many impressionist painters, especially the importance of Monet, and Van Gogh.  It's publisher is the New York Museum of Modern art, which gives a great deal of credence to it's legitimacy, and John Renwald, the books author, is considered the foremost impressionism expert of his time.  

Cole, J, David. Claude Debussy.

London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2010. Print.

 This is a detailed text about Claude Debussy, perhaps the most famous French Impressionist composer.  I thought it was important to study him specifically because of the amount of tone painting involved in his works, and this text strongly supports my reasoning.  Written by David J Cole, a music theory and music proffesor at the Royal School in the UK (one of the best music schools in the world), this text contains a wealth of information about not only the composer's life, but how his life effected and molded his work.  It also has a plethora of information about his compositional style and techniques, which is valuable in a comparison with the visual impressionist idiom.  

Kalitina, Nina. Claude Monet.

New York, New York: Parkstone Press International, 2005. Print.

Claude Monet is, similar to Debussy in his genre, probably the most well known example of an impressionist painter.   This text is a description of his life and the events which led up to his works, from the most famous to the most obscure.  Nina Kalitina is an artist in her own right, and is an accomplished painter and sculptor in addition to being a professor and a writer.  The text uses modern venacular to explain the brilliance of Monet in easy to digest chunks.  Dispite this, the text is a wealth of useful biographical and stylistic information.