The Impressionist Exhibition, 150 Years Later

Today, the Impressionists are a ubiquitous presence in museums around the world. But the First Impressionist Exhibition, held in Paris in 1874, was met with uproar.

This essay is the first in a series celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition, which debuted in Paris in 1874. If you’d like to read other essays on the history of Impressionism, you can do so here.

Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet ca. 1872. Via Wikimedia Commons.

We sat in a circle on the carpet of a cramped dorm room, chatting over a mediocre, half-devoured pizza, its cardboard box soggy with grease. Somehow, the late-night conversation had turned to art, and given that the participants were college freshmen, things were bound to slink towards the pretentious.

Someone had asked the group to share our favorite artists. When the eyes in the room turned to me, there were numerous answers I could have given. I loved Gustav Klimt and the artists of the Vienna Secession. I loved the Romantics. I loved Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. The masters of the Utagawa school. Greek antiquities. Jan Vermeer, Botticelli, Rembrandt…

Before I could rattle off a list, my first answ…