If you close your eyes and think of Paris during the Belle Époque, the City of Light does not appear in the amber tones of faded photographs, although cameras were much in use by that time. It is scenes of everyday life, rendered in the bright colors and liberated brushstrokes of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, that form our collective memory. This new approach to art gave license to human curiosity. “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec,” at the Royal Academy of Arts, takes us on a dizzying tour of the era, revealing fascinating fragments of everyday lives. We dance in the Moulin Rouge, gaze furtively at a heavily veiled woman in the street, then catch the eye of a beautiful stranger in a cab whose eyes we will never see again. We can spy on a lady in her bath, thanks to Degas and his shocking After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (1890–95). We become flâneurs, experiencing life as an artist and visiting places where no respectable member of the bourgeoisie would have gone. —Sarah Hyde