Any great story tends to focus on a limited number of characters, with everybody else either reduced to anonymity or the status of extras. In literary fiction or movies this is never a problem, but when the narrative is a historical one, it can lead to a certain amount of neglect and unfairness.

This can be demonstrated by the unjust obscurity that has enshrouded so many talented 20th-century artists who simply did not fit into the great iconoclastic avant-garde narrative of modern art, a story that now seems to have spent most of its energies.

"The Last Impressionists: Time of Intimacy," the latest exhibition at the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum, seeks to redress some of this injustice by focusing on the works of artists who continued to express themselves through impressionist, post-impressionist, and even realist styles, while other artistic revolutions unfolded elsewhere.